LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON.    N.  J. 

Presented  by 

mr5,'S".ui.2)oW5, 

BX  8721    .V76  1910 
Vrooman,  Hiram,  b.  1871. 
Religion  rationalized 


THE  NUNC  LICET  PRESS 

42  WEST  COULTER  ST.,  PHILADELPHIA,  PA. 
I9IO 


Copyrighted  by 
Rev.  Hiram  Vrooman 
1910 


DEDICATED 

LOVING  MEMORY  TO 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/reiigionrationalOOvroo_0 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  Introduction   i 

II.  Love    and    Truth    not    Abstractions  but 

Realities   lo 

III.  The  Criterion  of  Truth  and  the  Standard  of 

all  Values   35 

IV.  The  Essential  Difference  between  Theology 

and  Psychology   46 

V.  Some  Important  Discriminations   59 

VI.  Doing  One's  Greatest  Possible  Good   76 

VII.  The  Analogy  between  Applied  Science  and 

Applied  Theology   gg 

VIII.  The  Spiritual  Sciences  of  the  Future   121 

IX.  Some  Proposed  Substitutes  for  the  Church.  136 

X.  Phariseeism   146 

XI.  The  Future  of  Missionary  Work   157 

XII.  The  Function  and  the  Future  of  the  Church .  164 


V 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 


HEGLGGY,   or  religion  intellectually 


1  considered,  is  thought  of  generally  as 
nothing  more  important,  relatively,  than 
one  of  the  score  or  more  of  the  natural 
sciences.  This  is  a  misconception,  all  but 
fatal  to  theology,  religion  and  the  church. 
Theology  is  ideally  and  really  not  one  of 
the  many  sciences  but  the  actual  counter- 
part of  all  the  sciences  collectively — in  the 
sense  of  being  co-extensive  with  them  and 
of  representing  as  many  facts  as  they  do. 
This  can  be  shown  to  be  true  because  Hu- 
man-nature and  Nature  are  two  co-exten- 
sive realms  of  reality;    and  between  the 


I 


INTRODUCTION 


I 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

phenomena  of  these  great  realms  there 
exists  an  analogy  even  to  minutest  particu- 
lars. Theology  deals  primarily  with  the 
facts  of  Human-nature  and  Science  pri- 
marily with  those  of  Nature.  This  will  be 
abundantly  shown  in  the  following  pages. 
It  means,  among  other  things,  that  under 
the  term  theology,  as  distinguished  from 
the  term  science,  there  is  to  be  what 
could  be  called  a  spiritual  mathematics,  a 
spiritual  chemistry,  a  spiritual  geology  and 
the  like,  all  dealing  specifically  with  cer- 
tain groups  of  realities  potential  in  Hu- 
man-nature as  distinguished  from  material 
Nature. 

Perhaps  the  chief  reason  why  the  church 
has,  for  the  time  being,  lost  its  hold  on  the 
respect  and  veneration  of  men  is  because 
science,  within  the  past  century,  has  come 
to  represent  a  mass  of  definite  and  authentic 
information  so  much  vaster  and  more  sub- 

2 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

lime  than  the  theories  and  assertions  of 
theology  as  to  cause  theology  to  shrivel  into 
comparative  insignificance.  Another  impor- 
tant reason  is  that  the  race  has  advanced 
or  improved  in  mentality  and  spirituality, 
and  therefore  demands  in  religion  some- 
thing quite  as  rational  as  it  demands  in 
science. 

The  prediction  may  be  made  with  perfect 
assurance  that  the  theology  of  the  church 
in  the  not  distant  future,  when  compared 
with  the  theology  of  the  church  of  today, 
will  represent  an  increase  of  learning  in 
the  realm  of  spiritual  realities  quite  equal 
to  the  present  increase  of  scientific  learning 
in  the  realm  of  material  realities  over  that 
of  a  century  ago.  The  theology  of  our  fore- 
fathers is  as  deficient  for  present  needs  in 
religion  as  the  science  of  our  forefathers 
would  be  deficient  for  present  material 
needs.  Theological  knowledge  as  well  as 
3 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

scientific  must  necessarily  forever  continue 
to  increase. 

Theology  has  become  deplorably  mis- 
judged, discredited  and  unappreciated  be- 
cause of  its  identity  with  many  creeds  and 
dogmas  which  are  known  to  be  false  and 
which  stand  as  towering  barriers  to  progress. 
It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that 
creeds  and  dogmas  are  words  as  applicable 
to  science  as  to  theology.  Ideally  theology 
is  as  free  from  irrational  creeds  and  dogmas 
as  is  science  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  science 
at  one  time  was  as  much  polluted  by  such 
creeds  and  dogmas,  and  as  much  impeded 
in  its  growth,  as  theology  is  to-day. 

The  scientific  dogma,  for  instance,  that 
the  earth  was  the  centre  of  the  universe  and 
was  flat,  and  that  the  sun,  moon  and  stars 
revolved  around  it,  did  not  originate,  as 
often  believed,  in  the  Bible  or  in  the  church. 
It  was  supposed  to  be  confirmed  by  the 
4 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Bible,  and  was  sanctioned  and  maintained 
for  centuries  by  the  church,  but  it  had  its 
origin  in  the  false  appearances  of  Nature, 
and  was  first  asserted  by  Gentile  philos- 
ophers before  the  time  of  Christ.  Indeed, 
there  have  been  nearly  as  many  false  scien- 
tific dogmas  as  there  are  deceitful  appear- 
ances in  Nature.  Even  now,  in  this  boast- 
ful epoch  in  the  conquering  march  of  science, 
when  honesty,  honor  and  the  power  of 
demonstration  are  claimed  as  the  peculiar 
attributes  of  science,  we  still  have  remaining 
some  most  humiliating  examples  of  dis- 
honesty, dishonor  and  complete  failure  to 
demonstrate  the  truth  of  the  hypotheses 
advanced  in  some  of  our  sciences,  notably 
in  the  science  of  political  economy  as  it  is 
expounded  by  the  so-called  orthodox  school. 
The  unwarranted  and  absurd  dogmas  of 
economic  science  are  today  sufficiently  mani- 
fest to  give  perfect  illustration  of  the  fact 
5 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

that  unproved  dogmas  are  to  be  found  in 
science  as  well  as  in  theology.  False  dogmas 
in  both  science  and  theology  almost  in- 
variably originate  in  misleading  appear- 
ances or  in  the  sophistries  bom  of  selfish 
personal  interests.  Dogmas,  once  asserted, 
have  usually  been  maintained  and  perpet- 
uated by  authority — secular  as  well  as  re- 
ligious! During  all  the  ages  up  to  about  a 
century  ago  our  sciences,  so  resplendent  and 
luxuriant  now,  were  but  so  many  kernels 
in  their  respective  shells  or  coverings  of 
dogma.  The  favorable  springtime  of  human 
evolution  having  finally  arrived,  however, 
the  sciences  put  forth  their  roots  and  sprouts 
and,  by  means  of  a  freer  and  less  restricted 
growth,  have  caused  material  civilization 
to  advance,  in  about  one  hundred  years, 
further  than  during  all  the  preceding  cen- 
turies of  human  history!  Recent  scientific 
developments  have  made  of  our  epoch  a 
6 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

new  age  in  the  sense  of  its  being  an  incom- 
parable one. 

Theological  kernels,  apparently,  were  des- 
tined to  lay  aside  their  coverings  of  dogma 
a  full  century  later  than  the  scientific  ones, 
when  the  springtime  should  be  farther  ad- 
vanced and  warmer  with  love,  for  they  are 
only  now  sending  up  their  first  tender 
sprouts.  But  in  these  theological  shoots 
may  be  seen,  already,  the  promise  of  a 
progress  in  spirituality,  during  the  century 
that  is  upon  us,  that  will  be  the  equal  or  the 
counterpart  of  the  material  progress  that 
has  caused  our  age  to  be  so  entirely  without 
precedent. 

The  chief  purpose  of  this  little  volume 
is  to  show,  first  of  all,  that  religion  is  con- 
cerned primarily  with  definite  and  concrete 
facts  and  realities,  just  as  science  is,  and 
then  that  it  is  concerned  with  a  realm  of 
reality  no  less  extensive  than  the  immeasur- 
7 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

able  heights  and  breadths  and  depths  of 
all  the  immortal  potentialities  or  possibilities 
of  Human -nature,  that  this  spiritual  realm 
is  co-extensive  with  Nature  itself  and  that 
the  two  realms  are  related  in  a  peculiar 
and  vital  way  by  means  of  which  an  exact 
and  precise  analogy  or  correspondence  exists 
between  the  two  realms.  Thus  an  attempt 
is  made  to  prepare  and  point  out  the  way 
for  the  actual  proof  of  some  of  the  basic 
spiritual  facts  upon  which  any  or  all  true 
religion  must  rest. 

The  assertion  that  theology,  which  seems 
to  represent  but  a  remote  and  questionable 
comer  on  the  area  of  human  knowledge,  has 
within  it  the  potentialities  which  prophesy 
for  it  a  growth  and  expansion  equal  to  the 
progress  that  is  possible  to  all  the  sciences 
collectively,  will  seem  surprising  and  perhaps 
even  extravagant  to  some.  But  I  believe 
that  a  careful  reading  of  the  following  chap- 
8 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ters  will  cause  them  to  see  that  the  greatest 
discoveries  of  the  twentieth  century  will  be 
in  the  great  and  largely  unexplored  realms 
of  spiritual  reality. 


9 


II 


LOVE    AND    TRUTH    NOT    ABSTRACTIONS  BUT 


HE  prevailing  conceptions  of  love  and 


1  truth  in  Christendom  today  remind  us 
of  the  conceptions  of  heat  and  light  which 
prevailed  in  the  scholastic  world  a  few  cen- 
turies ago. 

Heat  and  light  were  as  mysterious  as 
ghosts.  They  were  vague  abstractions. 
They  produced  certain  effects  and  made 
men  happy  at  some  times  and  miserable 
at  other  times.  Yet  they  were  so  intangible 
as  to  seem  to  be  incomprehensible.  Sound 
and  wind  were  two  other  similar  spirit-like 
appearances. 

Did  you  ever  stop  to  think  what  it  has 
meant  to  science  and  to  the  progress  of 


REALITIES 


lO 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

civilization  to  learn  the  simple  fact  that 
heat  and  light  and  sound  and  wind  are 
forms  of  activity  in  matter?  Ten  thousand 
of  our  best  mechanical  inventions  could 
never  have  been  invented  without  this 
discovery.  Man  is  now  far  on  his  way 
towards  dominating  the  powers  and  forces 
of  Nature,  but  without  the  simple  discovery 
of  this  fundamental  fact  civilization  could 
now  be  but  little  in  advance  of  what  it  was 
a  century  ago.  Important,  however,  as 
was  this  discovery  to  science  and  to  the 
progress  of  civilization  it  was  of  no  greater 
importance  to  these  than  is  the  discovery 
to  theology  and  spirituality  of  the  nature 
of  love  and  truth  as  realities.  One  of  the 
chief  reasons  for  the  inadequate  theology 
of  the  churches  and  for  the  blind  groping 
of  religious  teachers,  is,  that  they  do  not 
know  what  love  and  truth  are  in  terms  of 
reality.  They  hold  them  still  to  be  ab- 
II 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

stractions  without  any  basis  of  known 
reality  and,  for  the  most  part,  inexplicable. 

This  ignorance,  as  will  be  showTi,  is  no 
longer  justifiable  because  theology  can  now 
deal  with  love  and  truth  as  definite  realities, 
to  be  studied,  interpreted  and  practically 
utilized.  Bear  in  mind  that  the  theme  of 
science  is  Nature,  but  that  the  theme  of 
theology  is  Human-nature.  It  will  be  shown 
that  God  also  is  the  theme  of  theology 
because  of  what  is  divinely  Human  in  Him. 

WTien  a  man  thinks  of  his  own  thoughts 
and  feelings  he  is  as  much  aware  of  the  exist- 
ence of  Human-nature  as  he  is  of  Nature 
when  he  thinks  of  rocks  and  trees.  He 
furthermore  recognizes  that  the  laws  in 
the  realm  of  Human -nature  are  as  numerous 
and  as  active  and  as  inexorable  as  are  the 
natural  laws  of  Nature. 

It  is  said  that  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum. 
Indeed  science  cannot  acknowledge  the  exist- 

12 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ence  of  a  vacuum,  but  assumes  that  all 
space  is  occupied  by  matter.  In  like  manner 
Human-nature  abhors  so-called  spiritual  ab- 
stractions which  arise  out  of  nothing.  It 
is  as  important  in  theology  to  think  of 
Human-nature  as  substantial  (although  not 
material)  as  it  is  in  science  to  think  of  space 
as  being  occupied  by  matter.  Any  theology 
which  is  not  built  upon  the  premise  that 
spirit  or  Human-nature  is  real,  in  the  sense 
of  being  substantial,  is  itself  vacuous. 

Did  you  ever  stop  to  think  upon  what 
grounds  the  earth  is  said  to  be  substantial? 
What  is  substance?  A  scientist  will  hold 
a  stone  between  his  fingers  and  declare  that 
it  is  composed  of  material  substances.  His 
only  reason  for  so  declaring,  however,  is 
that  the  stone  displays  certain  character- 
istics or  phenomena.  It  manifests  such 
qualities  as  size,  shape,  weight,  color  and 
temperature.  Now,  if  we  throw  the  stone 
13 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

away  and  pick  out  some  human  experience, 
such,  for  instance,  as  friendship,  we  find  that 
it  presents  as  many  characteristics  as  the 
stone  in  proof  of  its  reality  and  substan- 
tiality. To  digress  a  moment,  it  should  be 
noted  here  that  there  is,  of  course,  a  differ- 
ence between  a  reality  and  a  substance. 
Shape,  for  instance,  is  a  reality  but  not  a 
substance.  Any  true  abstraction  predi- 
cated of  a  substance  is  a  reality.  But  I 
expect  to  show  that  spirit  is  a  primary 
reality  and,  therefore,  substantial,  so  that 
from  it  abstract  realities  are  predicated. 
Now,  to  return  again  to  our  illustration,  we 
may  see  that  as  a  stone  is  a  combination  of 
several  materials,  so  friendship  is  a  combina- 
tion of  several  emotions.  Friendship  oc- 
cupies a  relative  position  in  a  man's  conscious 
state  at  a  given  time  according  to  its  dom- 
inance, and  hence  manifests  what  is  equiv- 
alent to  size  as  a  characteristic.  It  is  large 
14 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

or  small,  relatively,  according  to  its  position 
among  the  other  emotions  conscious  at  the 
time,  such,  perhaps,  as  jealousy,  anxiety, 
pride,  confidence,  zealous  purpose,  humility. 
It  proves  to  outweigh  selfishness  sometimes 
by  leading  to  personal  sacrifice,  and  hence 
a  quality  analogous  to  weight  may  be  predi- 
cated of  it.  Its  color  is  changed  frequently 
when  it  is  betrayed  or  abused.  Friendship 
may  act  upon  such  a  thing  as  avarice  as 
effectively  as  a  chemical  acts  upon  rock 
when  it  transforms  rock  into  gases,  and  this 
proves  a  vital  relationship  between  it  and 
surrounding  psychic  or  mental  objects  or 
realities.  Thus  as  many  relative  things  or 
characteristics  or  phenomena  might  be  predi- 
cated of  friendship  as  of  a  stone.  And, 
likewise,  as  many  abstractions  might  be 
predicated  of  any  human  love  as  of  any 
material  substance,  and  therefore,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  scientist's  own  method  of 
15 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

reasoning,  we  are  as  much  justified  in  de- 
claring the  substantiaHty  or  reality  of  spirit 
as  of  matter.  Theology  must  insist  upon 
the  substantiality  of  spirit  as  confidently  as 
science  insists  upon  the  substantiality  of 
matter,  because  it  has  equally  sufficient 
reasons  for  so  doing,  and  because  only  by 
so  doing,  do  the  concrete  things  of  Human- 
nature  become  tangible  objects  of  thought 
to  be  observed  and  interpreted  and  prac- 
tically used.  Of  course,  the  substantiality 
of  anything,  whether  it  be  spirit  or  matter, 
is  an  uncertain  and  a  relative  term.  The 
chief  point  of  the  contention  here  is  that 
spirit  is  not  derived  from  matter,  neither 
can  spirit  be  predicated  of  matter.  As  a 
matter  of  fact.  Revelation  gives  us  proof 
that  matter  has  derived  its  existence  from 
spirit.  If  this  is  so,  then,  spirit  takes  prece- 
dence of  matter  as  a  substance,  and  matter 
is  a  reality  and  a  substance  in  the  sense  of 
i6 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

being  an  offspring  or  effect  of  spirit,  created 
to  be  an  instrumentality  of  service  to  human 
souls.  Matter  and  spirit  then  represent 
two  distinct  realms  of  being,  realms  of  sub- 
stance, which  are  as  distinct  as  body  and 
soul. 

It  is  an  unusual  thing  for  materialistic 
philosophers  to  acknowledge  the  substan- 
tiality of  spirit  because  they  have  unwar- 
rantably dogmatised,  and,  without  reason 
assumed,  that  the  soul  is  an  effect  arising 
from  matter  as  its  cause.  But  Prof.  Wm. 
James  acknowledges  at  least  the  substan- 
tiality of  spirit  by  saying:*  "Similarly  our 
thoughts  and  feelings  are  affections  or  prop- 
erties of  our  several  souls,  which  are  sub- 
stances, but  again  not  wholly  in  their  own 
right,  for  they  are  modes  of  the  still  deeper 
substance  of  'spirit'."  In  the  same  para- 
graph he  speaks  of  the  "modes,  attributes, 
♦Pragmatism,  page  86. 

3  17 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

properties,  accidents,  or  affections, — use 
which  term  you  will — "  which  are  to  be 
predicated  of  substance — either  material  or 
spiritual. 

If  a  dogmatic  statement  may  be  allowed 
at  this  point,  with  the  understanding  that 
it  is  dogmatic  till  proved  further  on,  the 
first  definition  may  now  be  given  of  love  and 
truth:  what  heat  and  light  are  to  Nature, 
love  and  truth  are  to  Human-nature. 

The  centremost  physical  fact  of  Nature  is 
the  sun  of  pure  fire  sending  out  its  radiations 
of  heat  and  light.  This  is  the  one  fact  that 
gives  determination  to  all  other  facts.  Now, 
note  a  fundamentally  important  parallel: 
the  centremost  spiritual  fact  of  Human- 
nature  is  the  personal  God  of  infinite  and 
divine  Love  and  Wisdom,  sending  out  His 
radiations  of  love  and  truth.  This  is  the 
one  fact  in  Human-nature  which  gives  de- 
termination to  all  other  facts.  The  differ- 
i8 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ent  forms  of  heat  in  this  world  are  forms  of 
molecular  activity  caused  by  the  constant 
action  of  the  sun,  or  "influx"  from  the  sun; 
and,  in  a  parallel  way,  all  human  emotions 
or  affections  are  forms  of  activity  within 
the  spiritual  substances  of  Human-nature 
caused  by  the  constant  action  of  God,  or 
influx  from  God. 

If  we  see  now  how  it  might  be  (as  later  it 
will  be  shown  to  be)  that  love  and  truth  are 
forms  of  activity  within  the  substances 
which  compose  a  human  soul,  just  as  heat 
and  light  are  forms  of  activity  within  the 
substances  which  compose  the  earth,  and 
that  the  source  of  this  activity  in  a  human 
soul  is  God,  just  as  the  source  of  the  activ- 
ity in  matter  is  the  sun,  then  we  have 
made  partial  preparation,  as  will  later  be 
seen,  for  a  clear  and  discriminating  under- 
standing of  the  existence  of  the  criterion  of 
truth  in  theology  and  the  true  standard 
19 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  values  to  be  described  in  the  next 
chapter. 

Looking  at  things  scientifically  again,  we 
observe  that  heat  produces  innumerable 
effects.  It  will  turn  wood  to  coals  of  fire. 
Not  only  so,  but  it  is  the  primary  contrib- 
uting force  which  transforms  clay  into 
wood  by  causing  trees  to  grow.  Sometimes 
heat  produces  radiations  of  light,  as  from  red- 
hot  iron  and  the  flame  of  a  lamp,  but  under 
different  conditions  it  sends  forth  black  and 
suffocating  smoke  without  any  flame.  Now, 
if  we  look  from  the  theological  standpoint 
for  the  parallel  of  these  facts  in  Human- 
nature,  we  find  that  love  produces  equally  as 
numerous  effects  in  human  life,  and,  what 
is  more,  effects  that  are  precisely  analogous. 
Love  will  sometimes  turn  ordinary  good  reso- 
lutions into  burning  zeal.  Not  only  so.  but  it 
is  the  chief  contributing  force  which  first 
caused  a  man  to  form  good  resolutions.  Love, 
20 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

according  to  some  of  its  combinations  in 
human  experience,  illumines  the  mind  as  by 
a  most  brilliant  light  of  truth,  but,  according 
to  other  combinations,  it  darkens  the  mind 
as  by  the  very  black  smoke  of  falsity. 

Before  carrying  this  analogy  between  Na- 
ture and  Human-nature  further,  let  us  pause 
to  fasten  securely  in  the  memory  the  fact 
which  is  now  manifest,  namely,  that  every 
emotion,  feeling,  affection,  motive,  purpose, 
or  intention,  by  whatsoever  name  it  may  be 
known,  is  nothing  other  than  some  form  of 
love  activity  within  the  substances  of  the 
spirit  or  soul.  Fear,  anger,  and  revenge 
are  representative  of  innumerable  evil  emo- 
tions. These  are  of  the  kind  which  fill  the 
mind  with  the  smoke  of  false  interpretations 
of  life.  Kindness,  humility,  trustfulness  in 
Providence  are  representative  of  innumerable 
good  emotions  which  fill  the  mind  with  the 
light  of  truth  as  from  a  flame. 

21 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

In  Nature,  heat,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, is  the  chief  cause  of  the  great  deserts. 
Under  certain  conditions  hot  winds  bum  up 
growing  crops.  It  is  heat  which  causes 
earthquakes  and  volcanoes.  It  is  heat, 
furthermore,  which  causes  floods,  by  first 
drawing  water  into  the  atmosphere  and 
then  causing  it  to  precipitate  upon  the  land. 
Indeed,  but  little  exercise  of  the  imagination 
is  required  to  conceive  of  conditions  on  some 
planet  which  would  cause  the  stm's  heat  to 
produce  a  lifeless  desolation,  covered  over 
with  ashes  and  cinders,  instead  of  a  world 
bringing  forth  an  immortal  humanity.  We 
see,  therefore,  that  heat  in  Nature  is  de- 
structive and  wasteful  under  some  circum- 
stances, and  is  the  chief  contributing  force 
to  construction,  growth,  and  life  under 
other  circumstances. 

Fortunately  for  Nature,  the  various  heat 
activities  in  it  are  directed  by  Divine  Provi- 

22 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

dence  in  such  a  way  as  to  insure  an  orderly 
evolution,  perfectly  suited  to  fulfilling  the 
purpose  for  which  it  was  created.  This 
purpose  was,  so  far  as  we  know,  to  assist  as 
an  instrumentality  in  the  hands  of  God,  in 
bringing  forth  an  immortal  humanity.  Na- 
ture in  itself,  however,  thought  of  as  some- 
thing independent  of  the  God  who  uses  it 
instrumentally  and  of  the  humanity  which 
is  served  by  it,  is  dead  and  has  no  responsi- 
bilities more  than  a  machine.  Human -nature, 
on  the  contrary,  carries  certain  responsi- 
bilities in  respect  to  its  own  evolution  which 
Nature  does  not  have.  Every  man  is  in- 
exorably responsible  for  helping  to  determine 
whether  the  love  activities  within  himself 
are  to  be  destructive  or  constructive,  harm- 
ful or  helpful.  A  world  wherein  deserts 
and  floods  and  storms  and  earthquakes  and 
volcanoes  prevail  to  such  an  extent  as 
utterly  to  destroy  the  vegetable  and  animal 
23 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

kingdoms,  is  representative  of  or  analogous 
to  the  state  of  being  of  certain  infernal 
spirits.  But  a  world,  such  as  ours,  wherein 
the  heat  from  the  sun  is  so  governed  and 
directed  by  Di\dne  Providence  as  to  bring 
forth  a  regenerating  humanity,  vdth  all  of 
the  marvelous  provisions  that  the  world 
contains  for  the  present  and  future  progress 
of  humanity,  is  representative  of  or  analogous 
to  the  state  of  being  of  a  regenerating  man 
who  is  to  be  an  angel. 

Thomas  Carh'le  speaks  of  "The  imspeak- 
able  divine  significance,"  and  states  that 
the  true  hero,  of  whom  he  is  writing,  is  "The 
great  sotil  open  to  the  di\ane  significance  of 
life."  The  German  philosopher  Fichte  em- 
ploys equally  as  high-sounding  phraseology 
when  he  speaks  of  the  "  Divine  idea  of  the 
world"  as  the  "essence"  underlying  all 
appearances,  and  further  declares  that  the 
true  literary  man,  of  whom  he  is  writing, 
24 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

"lives  in"  this  "Divine  idea."  Maeter- 
linck, in  describing  a  similar  vague  and 
abstract  ideality,  employs  his  favorite  word 
"Beauty."  Even  that  truly  great  religious 
teacher  and  pioneer,  the  late  Henry  Drum- 
mond,  when  he  entitles  a  book,  "The  Great- 
est Thing  in  the  World,"  by  which  is  meant 
"love,"  gives  us  little  definite  information 
as  to  the  real  nature  of  love. 

What  do  these  expressions  of  Carlyle, 
Fichte,  Maeterlinck  and  Drummond  mean 
to  us,  and  how  do  they  help  us,  in  the  con- 
crete experiences  of  life?  When  we  are 
immersed  in  the  problems  and  anxieties  of 
life,  what  do  they  mean  to  us?  When  one's 
employer  has  broken  faith  and  dismissed 
him  from  service,  which  has  been  the  source 
of  his  livelihood;  when  one's  employee  has 
proved  faithless  and  bungled  his  work ;  when 
one  is  distressed  with  delicate  family  com- 
plications; at  such  times  what  guidance  or 

25 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

relief  is  to  be  had  from  the  thought  of  Car- 
lyle's  "Unspeakable  divine  significance  of 
life, "  or  Fichte's  "  Divine  idea  of  the  world," 
or  Maeterlinck's  "Beauty,"  or  even  Drum- 
mond's  "Greatest  Thing  in  the  World"? 
In  the  vague  and  abstract  realm  in  which 
these  are  made  to  abide  they  are  as  the 
northern  lights  seen  in  the  skies,  or  as 
golden  stmsets,  or  beautiful  clouds,  to  give 
certain  sensations  of  pleasure  and  exhilara- 
tion at  recess  times,  when  all  the  serious 
problems  of  life  have  been  laid  aside  for  a 
while.  But  when  we  think  of  love  as  a 
substantial  and  concrete  emotional  reality 
which  is  present  when  talking  business, 
writing  letters,  making  plans,  holding  social 
intercourse,  suffering  bodily  pain,  then  we 
know  that  it  is  our  responsibility  to  deal 
with  the  particular  love  that  may  be  present 
at  any  given  time  with  spiritual  judgment 
and  according  to  the  direction  of  truth. 
26 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

There  is  never  a  wakeful  moment  when 
some  feeling  or  form  of  love  is  not  present 
or  alive  on  the  plane  of  consciousness. 
And  the  particular  thing  of  supreme  im- 
portance for  any  man  at  any  particular 
time  is  to  deal  with  the  particular  love  which 
is  dominant  at  the  time  as  spiritual  truth 
would  direct  him.  In  traveling,  the  most 
important  step  to  be  taken  at  any  time  is 
the  next  step.  The  most  important  bridge 
to  be  crossed  at  any  time  is  the  one  imme- 
diately confronting  the  person.  And  so,  that 
particular  form  of  love  which  may  be  domi- 
nant in  an  experience  at  any  particular 
time,  whether  that  experience  be  chiefly 
characterized  by  what  we  call  anxiety  or 
trust,  revenge  or  mercy,  a  bad  one  or  a 
good  one.  Is  the  particular  love  which 
demands  the  attention  right  there  and  then. 
The  good  or  evil  effect  that  it  produces  in 
the  life  is  entirely  dependent  upon  one's 
27 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

attitude  toward  it  at  the  time  of  its  appear- 
ance in  one's  consciousness. 

Scientists  are  frequently  puzzled  to  know 
what  forms  of  heat  are  helpful  to  mankind 
as  a  whole,  and  what  ones  harmful.  The 
heat  which  produces  a  desert  causes  great 
waste.  And  yet  there  is  to  be  considered 
the  climatic  changes  caused  by  the  desert 
which  may  add  greatly  to  the  value  of  the 
regions  adjacent  to  it.  Severe  winters  cause 
the  death  of  many  people.  They  also  cause 
the  death  of  many  germs,  which,  if  allowed 
to  live,  might  cause  the  death  of  yet  more 
people.  It  is  difficult  for  a  scientist  or 
practical  man  to  know  when  heat  is  good  or 
when  heat  is  bad,  but  how  much  more 
difficult  is  it  for  a  man  to  know  when  his 
loves  are  good  and  when  they  are  bad! 
Indeed,  the  supreme  practical  religious  prob- 
lem, with  every  man,  is  that  of  knowing 
the  difference  between  the  good  and  evil 

28 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  his  own  loves — between  selfishness  and 
unselfishness.  If  a  man  discovers  a  fire  in 
his  house,  he  sends  in  the  alarm  and  sets 
himself  to  the  task  of  putting  out  the  fire. 
There  are  some  kinds  of  emotions  which 
come  into  our  conscious  lives,  which,  if  not 
immediately  opposed  and  extinguished,  will 
cause  certain  spiritual  losses  in  our  character, 
as  great  as  the  loss  of  one's  home  by  fire. 
How,  then,  are  we  to  distinguish  between 
loves  that  are  good  and  loves  that  are  bad? 
And  how  are  we  to  know  how  to  deal  with 
them  as  they  come  into  our  conscious  ex- 
perience? This,  indeed,  is  a  profound  and 
significant  question.  And,  can  you  not  see 
that  it  is  practically  the  same  question  that 
Pilate  asked  of  Jesus,  "What  is  truth?" 
The  observations  just  made  foreshadow  the 
answer  to  this  profound  question.  Truth 
in  the  theological  sense  might  be  defined  as 
that  peculiar  kind  of  enlightenment  which 
29 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

enables  a  man  to  distinguish  between  the  good 
and  the  evil  of  his  own  loves  and  to  know  how 
to  deal  with  them  for  his  own  best  spiritual 
growth  and  his  consequent  maximum  of  good 
works.  Theology  is  but  the  literary  form 
or  statement  of  the  partictdars  of  truth  thus 
defined. 

Persons  who  make  no  distinction  between 
spiritual  and  material  things  say  that  truth 
is  simply  that  which  stands  for  facts.  Ac- 
cording to  the  ordinary  use  of  language,  a 
scientific  fact  could  properly  be  called  a 
truth,  but  when  our  Lord  declared  that  He 
came  to  bear  witness  to  the  truth,  we  know 
at  once  that  "the  truth"  about  which  He 
was  speaking  is  something  very  different 
from  the  ordinary  facts  of  science. 

There  is  the  same  distinction,  as  to  kind, 
between  the  Lord's  truth  and  the  ordinary 
facts  of  science  as  between  Nature  and 
Human-nature,  as  between  a  human  emo- 
30 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

tion  and  the  heat  of  a  stove,  as  between  the 
soul  and  the  body — which  distinction  has 
already  been  alluded  to. 

Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  what  Jesus 
Christ  meant  by  Himself  bearing  witness 
to  the  truth.  He  had  experiences  from  the 
time  of  His  birth  to  His  crucifixion,  some- 
what similar  to  the  experiences  of  ordinary 
men  and  women.  He  worked  as  a  carpenter, 
as  a  sailor,  as  a  pedestrian,  and  did  hundreds 
of  other  things,  as  occasion  required,  which 
caused  Him  to  experience  the  sensations  of 
being  tired  and  hungry  and  sleepy  and  many 
others.  When  He  was  in  the  wilderness, 
tempted  of  the  devil,  undoubtedly  fears  and 
anxieties,  with  deep  despondency  and  de- 
jection, came  into  His  experiences.  Indeed, 
we  know  that  all  of  the  evil  loves  that  abide 
inherently  in  degenerate  Human-nature  as 
well  as  those  in  regenerate  Human-nature, 
came  into  His  personal  experiences,  in  the 
31 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

sense  of  their  being  aroused  by  circumstances 
and  awakened  to  consciousness,  according 
to  a  certain  orderly  progression,  during  His 
life  in  the  world.  Such  emotions  as  hatred, 
revenge,  deceit,  coveteousness,  subtle  am- 
bition and  all  the  rest  that  might  be  named, 
without  any  exception,  thrust  themselves 
into  His  experiences  as  they  do,  in  less 
numbers  and  milder  forms,  into  ours.  But 
mark  one  of  the  most  significant  facts  of 
which  mortal  may  take  note:  how  did  He 
deal  with  these  evil  emotions  that  came 
into  His  consciousness  or  into  His  personal 
experiences?  The  manner  in  which  He  dealt 
with  these  loves  was  the  way  that  He  "bore 
witness  to  the  truth."  Does  not  a  mathema- 
tician bear  witness  to  the  facts  of  mathemat- 
ics when  he  deals  with  his  figures  in  such 
wise  as  to  work  out  a  perfectly  true  result? 
Does  not  the  chemist  bear  witness  to  the 
facts  of  chemistry  when,  in  his  laboratory, 
32 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

he  mixes  certain  chemicals  so  as  to  produce 
a  definite  desired  result?  And  so  it  was 
with  our  Lord:  in  dealing  with  the  Human- 
nature  with  which  he  had  clothed  Himself 
from  the  virgin  Mary,  He  produced  a  cer- 
tain result:  that  of  an  absolutely  perfect 
human  growth.  He  dealt  with  all  the  in- 
herent loves  therein,  as  they  came  to  the 
plane  of  conscious  experience,  with  abso- 
lutely perfect  wisdom — which  was,  indeed, 
the  wisdom  of  God  who  He  Himself  was. 
Thereby  He  produced  a  growth  or  fruition 
which  was  absolutely  perfect,  and  thereby 
presented  to  men  a  standard  by  which  quali- 
ties in  human  loves  may  be  correctly  com- 
puted. 

Sufficient  it  is,  in  this  chapter,  if  we  simply 
sight  remotely  the  existence  of  a  distinc- 
tively spiritual  truth,  by  which  men  may 
be  enabled  to  deal  wisely  with  their 
loves. 

3  33 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

The  fundamental  matter  of  discriminating 
between  good  and  bad  qualities  of  human 
loves  is  treated  in  several  of  the  succeeding 
chapters,  particularly  in  Chapters  III  and 
VII. 


34 


Ill 


THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  AND  THE  STANDARD 
OF  ALL  VALUES 

IF  there  exists  one  single  fact  of  sure 
and  positive  knowledge,  then  there  exists 
a  criterion  of  truth  by  which  that  fact 
has  been  tested  or  verified.  The  method  of 
demonstrating  facts  by  which  they  become 
known  for  a  certainty  is  the  criterion  of 
truth  for  the  facts  so  attested.  And  simi- 
larly, any  true  knowledge  of  the  value  of 
anything  whatsoever  is  ascertained  only  by 
means  of  a  standard  of  values.  The  value 
of  a  thing,  the  good  or  evil  of  it,  is  invariably 
and  necessarily  determined  by  its  relation 
to  something  which  we  have  correctly  found 
to  be  the  standard  of  values. 
I.  The  criterion  of  truth. 
Men  have  always  known  that  there  were 

35 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

some  facts  which  they  knew  certainly.  The 
fact  of  consciousness,  for  instance,  is  one. 
That  two  and  two  make  four  is  another. 
Hence,  never  has  there  been  a  time  when  some 
small  use  has  not  been  made  of  the  criterion 
of  truth.  It  may  fairly  be  said,  however, 
that  not  until  modem  times  has  the  criterion 
of  truth  been  recognized  as  an  objective  real- 
ity, itself  to  be  studied  and  then  employed 
\^dth  ever  increasing  effectiveness  as  a  primal 
instrumentality  for  new  discoveries.  It  is 
by  the  aid  of  the  criterion  of  truth  that 
the  modem  world  has  suddenly  developed 
a  marvelous  ability  to  verify,  demonstrate 
and  prove  to  a  certainty  an  ever  increasing 
number  of  facts  and  conclusions.  The  chief 
of  the  practical  results  of  this  ability  is  the 
discrimination  that  is  now  made  between 
what  men  know  arid  what  they  do  not  know. 

This  criterion  of  tmth  or  method  of  be- 
coming certain  of  one's  facts  has  been  em- 
36 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ployed  chiefly  and  almost  exclusively  by 
scientists  in  their  distinctive  realm.  And 
even  by  them  it  was  not  employed  in  any 
satisfactory  way  until  modern  times.  By 
theologians,  it  has  scarcely  as  yet  been  em- 
ployed at  all  in  the  realm  of  religion.  But 
before  religion  can  be  rationalized  to  any 
satisfactory  extent  the  criterion  of  truth 
must  be  consciously  recognized  and  purpose- 
fully employed  to  separate  spiritual  facts 
of  sure  and  definite  knowledge  from  beliefs 
which  are  not  matters  of  knowledge.  There 
is  a  faith  which  is  knowledge  and  another 
kind  of  faith  which  is  belief  in  spite  of  the 
absence  of  knowledge.  These  are  two  very 
different  things. 

2.  The  standard  of  all  values. 

It  is  universally  acknowledged  that  all  truth 
has  value.  Scientists  seek  after  truth  be- 
cause they  know  as  a  self-evident  fact  that 
intrinsic  worth  must  necessarily  be  gained 

37 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

with  every  new  discovery  and  demonstration. 
Some  truths  are  more  important  than  others, 
hence,  more  valuable.  Science  has  its  stan- 
dard of  values.  It  may  be  defined  with 
approximate  accuracy,  as  man's  physical 
and  mental  well-being  during  his  temporal 
stay  in  this  world.  The  value  of  every  scien- 
tific fact  is  estimated,  according  to  this 
standard,  by  what  it  contributes  to  man's 
material  welfare.  The  use  or  abuse  of 
things,  therefore,  according  to  the  scientific 
estimate  of  values,  is  determined  by  their 
effects  upon  man's  physical  and  mental 
welfare  here  and  now.  Even  the  pragmatic 
philosophy,  which  declares  a  thing  to  be  true 
to  the  degree  of  its  practical  working  or  use, 
recognizes  no  higher  standard  of  values  than 
man's  earthly  welfare,  and  the  practical 
working  or  use  of  a  thing  is,  hence,  deter- 
mined by  the  effect  of  that  thing  upon  man's 
worldly  prosperity. 

38 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Religion,  however,  when  it  deals  with  the 
phenomena  of  Human-nature,  somewhat  as 
science  deals  with  the-  phenomena  of  ma- 
terial Nature,  discovers  certain  potentiali- 
ties which  indicate  certain  forms  of  well- 
being  and  prosperity  which  men  may  experi- 
ence after  they  leave  this  world.  Whether 
we  speak  of  a  standard  of  values  or  of 
a  man's  "point  of  view,"  the  same  idea  is 
involved.  Science  looks  at  all  facts  and 
phenomena  from  the  point  of  view  of  man's 
temporal  and  worldly  prosperity,  and  hence 
its  standard  of  values  is  determined  by  what 
it  sees  from  that  point  of  view.  Religion, 
however,  looks  at  facts  and  phenomena  from 
the  point  of  view  of  man's  immortality,  of 
an  ever  advancing  prosperity  and  develop- 
ment which  continues  on  forever.  Hence, 
the  standard  of  value  in  religion  may  he 
described  with  approximate  accuracy  as  man's 
eternal  well-being  or  prosperity.  It  will 
39 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

be  seen  that  these  two  standards  are  very 
different.  It  will  furthermore  be  seen  that 
the  spiritual  standard,  when  adopted  by 
scientists,  becomes  a  stimulus  even  to 
purely  scientific  pursuits. 

The  awful  mental  confusion  which  pre- 
vails in  the  religious  or  theological  world 
concerning  its  facts  and  beliefs,  and  which 
does  not  seem  to  prevail  in  any  alarming 
degree  in  the  scientific  world,  is  largely  be- 
cause most  religious  thinkers  ignore  any 
criterion  of  truth  for  theology  and  have  no 
clearly  defined  spiritual  standard  of  values. 
Scientists  as  individuals  and  colleges  as 
organizations  form  a  great  worldwide  fed- 
eration or  union  with  no  such  differences  as 
divide  the  churches,  and  this  is  chiefly  be- 
cause their  methods  of  determining  the 
difference  between  fact  and  belief,  between 
fact  and  probable  truth,  are  definite  and 
universally  recognized.  Inasmuch  as  the 
40 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

best  possible  progress  of  material  civiliza- 
tion (which  is  equivalent  to  "man's  mental 
and  physical  well-being  here  and  now") 
represents  the  standard  for  science,  nearly- 
all  scientific  men  work  in  practical  agree- 
ment and  as  one  great  organized  army  of 
investigators  and  demonstrators.  But  re- 
ligious men  have  not  as  yet  any  such  bind- 
ing and  co-ordinating  standard  as  a  bond 
of  union.    This  must  yet  be  discovered. 

It  is  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  im- 
portance of  the  recognition  of  the  criterion 
of  truth  and  the  standard  of  values  as  the 
chief  of  all  the  instrumentalities  in  enabling 
the  human  reason  to  make  true  advance- 
ment in  either  science  or  religion.  In  the 
religious  world  particularly,  fact  and  knowl- 
edge cannot  supersede  the  prevailing  un- 
reasonable creeds  and  dogmas  until  the 
method,  or  the  criterion  of  truth,  is  found 
by  which  positively  ascertained  facts  can 
41 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

be  distinguished  from  supposed  facts;  and 
until  the  standard  of  values  is  found  by 
which  all  things  can  be  seen  in  their  relation 
to  man's  chief  interest.  The  standard  of 
all  values  must  necessarily  be  the  same  thing 
as  man's  "chief"  interest,  whatever,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  that  may  be.  The  question 
then  arises:  What  is  man's  chief  interest? 
Is  there  any  special  or  particular  interest 
which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  on  ac- 
count of  what  is  potential  in  man,  could  be 
truly  said  to  be  man's  chief  interest,  in 
relation  to  which  the  values  of  all  other 
interests  are  to  be  estimated?  The  ex- 
ceedingly great  importance  of  this  question 
is  being  brought  home  to  us  by  much  that 
is  being  said  in  our  so-called  "most  pro- 
gressive ' '  and ' '  modem ' '  literature.  In  most 
subtle  and  refined  ways  the  questions  are 
being  raised:  How  is  right  to  be  distin- 
guished from  wrong?  what  is  morality? 
42 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

what  is  honesty?  what  is  righteousness? 
are  not  our  standards  for  such  things  mainly 
the  false  notions  which  are  the  outcome  of 
hereditary  prejudices  and  false  sentiment? 
may  it  not  be  that  the  standard  for  such 
things  is  only  what  our  less  intelligent  and 
less  thoughtful  ancestors  have  supersti- 
tiously  believed?  and  will  not  the  standard 
change  and  be  improved  when  people's 
notions  about  these  things  change? 

It  is  for  religion  to  find  this  standard  of 
all  values  by  the  criterion  of  truth.  If  it 
fails  in  this,  theology  is  without  purpose. 
It  will  be  evident  to  any  thoughtful  mind 
that  the  only  method  of  ascertaining  what 
this  standard  is,  is  that  of  studying  the 
potentialities  of  a  human  being.  What  do 
regeneration  and  degeneration  mean  ?  What 
is  meant  by  character  and  the  lack  of  char- 
acter? What  is  meant  by  growing  into 
the  very  best  of  what  it  is  possible  for  one 

43 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

to  become,  and  by  turning  out  to  be  the 
very  worst  of  what  it  is  possible  to  become? 
Evidently  the  standard  of  values  is  to  be 
determined  by  that  which  is  discovered  as 
being  the  very  best  outcome  to  life  that 
is  potentially  possible.  Those  conceptions 
of  honesty  and  of  justice  and  of  morality 
and  of  virtue  and  of  purity  and  of  righteous- 
ness which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  contrib- 
ute most  effectively  to  a  man's  best  possible 
fruition,  would  be,  according  to  the  standard 
of  all  values,  right  and  good.  The  same 
standard  would  declare  that  those  other 
conceptions  of  these  things  which  divert 
the  direction  of  a  man's  development  away 
from  his  highest  possible  attainments  are, 
to  the  extent  of  their  diverting  influence, 
bad.  and  evil,  and  wicked.  Hence,  it  is  not 
a  question  of  a  theory  or  of  any  church  dogma, 
but,  just  as  it  is  in  science,  so  in  religion,  it 
is  a  question  of  what  is — and  of  finding  it 
44 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

out.  Among  the  other  things,  therefore, 
which  this  book  endeavors  to  accompHsh, 
is  to  show  that  it  is  one  of  the  chief  functions 
of  religion  to  point  out  or  to  reveal  to  man- 
kind the  standard  of  all  values — in  the  light 
of  which  the  right  and  the  wrong  of  things 
will  always  stand  revealed. 


45 


IV 


THE    ESSENTIAL    DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN 
THEOLOGY    AND  PSYCHOLOGY 

INASMUCH  as  psychology  is  the  science 
which  treats  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
mind,  it  is  supposed  by  many  that  if  theology 
were  liberated  from  its  irrational  creeds 
and  dogmas  its  domain  would  be  coex- 
tensive with  that  of  one  of  the  subdivisions 
of  psychology,  i.  e.,  religious  psychology. 
It  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  at  the  very 
beginning  of  any  rational  consideration  of 
religion,  to  understand  the  error  of  this 
position.  The  simple  fact,  as  will  be  shown, 
is  that  psychology  is  deserving  of  no  greater 
dignity  than  to  be  classed  as  one  of  the 
score  and  more  of  the  natural  sciences, 
whereas  theology,  as  was  stated  in  the  first 
chapter,  and  as  will  be  shown  to  be  so  in 
46 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

succeeding  chapters,  has  the  preeminence  of 
being  co-extensive  with  and  analogous  to  all 
the  sciences  collectively,  including  psychology. 

All  tolerably  well  informed  persons  are 
familiar  with  the  chief  claims  of  psychology, 
its  leading  achievements,  and  its  general 
scope  as  a  science.  It  is  needless  and, 
within  the  limits  of  our  available  space, 
entirely  impossible  to  enumerate  the  things 
which  psychology  can  do  because  such  an 
enumeration  itself  would  require  volumes. 
Our  object  will  be  gained,  and  quickly,  by 
showing  rather  the  one  essential  thing  which 
theology  can,  but  which  psychology  cannot, 
accomplish.  A  proper  understanding  of  this 
one  essential  thing  which  psychology  cannot 
do,  but  which  theology  can  do,  brings  theol- 
ogy at  once  before  the  mind  in  its  real  and 
overshadowing  importance. 

The  one  supremely  fundamental  thing 
which  is  lacking  in  psychology  is  the  faculty 
47 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

or  power  to  ascertain  the  quality  in  human 
loves  or  emotions.  Psychology  cannot  dis- 
cover or  reveal  any  distinction  whatever  be- 
tween selfishness  and  unselfishness  in  the 
qualities  of  human  affections,  emotions  or 
loves.  It  cannot  contribute  the  knowledge 
necessary  to  the  cultivation  of  unselfishness 
in  human  character.  It  cannot  illuminate 
the  question  of  personal  rewards  and  pun- 
ishments, as  these  may  be  the  outcome  of 
selfish  or  unselfish  developments  of  character. 
This  is,  to  be  sure,  a  sweeping  and  far-reach- 
ing statement.  It  is  literally  true,  however, 
and  the  truth  of  it,  when  seen,  will  cause  the 
dropping  of  the  scales  from  the  eyes  which 
have  been  one  of  the  chief  blinds  to  prevent 
a  true  vision  of  Human-nature. 

It  is  possible  to  have  the  kind  of  a  religious 
faith,  which  believes  what  is  not  known,  with- 
out having  any  understanding  of  the  es- 
sential distinctions  which  exist  in  the  quali- 
48 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ties  of  human  loves.  But  all  religious  faith, 
which  is  founded  on  what  is  definitely  known, 
must  necessarily  be  based  upon  an  actual 
and  true  vision  of  real  distinctions  between 
different  qualities  in  human  loves — qualities 
determined  by  their  relations  to  the  spiritual 
standard  of  values  described  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  The  starting-point  of  any  concrete 
and  definite  theological  knowledge  is  a  true 
vision  of  opposing  qualities  in  human  loves 
where  they  stand  revealed  by  contrast,  as, 
for  instance,  between  pride  and  humility  or 
fear  and  confidence  in  God.  Hence,  nothing 
but  the  vision  which  distinguishes  truly 
between  the  different  qualities  of  human 
loves  leads  one  to  the  sure  knowledge  of  a 
divine  revelation,  immortality  and  other 
like  important  religious  facts.  But,  as 
stated,  psychology  cannot,  in  the  very 
nature  of  things,  deal  with  the  spiritual 
quality  of  a  human  life. 
4  49 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Some  psychologists,  to  be  sure,  will  refute 
this  statement  and  claim  that  psychology 
does  take  note  of  the  phenomena  called 
selfishness  and  unselfishness.  Psychology 
does  have  a  certain  method  by  which  it 
determines  upon  what  it  claims  to  be  selfish 
and  unselfish  qualities.  We  shall  show,  how- 
ever, that  the  phenomenon  which  it  names 
selfishness  and  the  other  one  which  it  names 
unselfishness  are  not  selfishness  and  unsel- 
fishness, but  are  entirely  different  things. 
Wherever  it  claims  to  make  this  distinction 
it  goes  beyond  its  jurisdiction  and  fails. 
It  fails  because  it  has  no  standard  of  perfect 
quality  in  human  life  to  judge  from  and  no 
method  of  finding  one.  In  so  far  as  it 
claims  to  have  such  a  standard  or  method 
it  puts  forth  a  false  claim. 

The  business  of  the  truth  seeker  is  to 
find  out  what  actually  exists.  It  is  known 
that  quality  in  human  character  must 
50 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

necessarily  exist.  This  means  that  there 
must  be  differing  or  relative  qualities  rang- 
ing from  some  lowest  stratum  to  some 
highest.  Some  psychologists,  knowing  from 
theory  or  general  principles  that  this  must 
necessarily  be,  have  made  efforts,  by  psych- 
ological methods,  to  discover  this  hier- 
archy of  spiritual  qualities  and  to  make 
discriminations  between  them.  But  when- 
ever such  attempts  have  been  made  they 
have  followed  bHnd  trails,  for  the  simple 
but  sufficient  reason  that  such  investigation 
is  as  impossible  to  the  psychologist  as  the 
scrutiny  of  the  soul  would  be  impossible 
to  the  anatomist. 

As  an  illustration  of  this  contention,  we 
need  only  to  consider  the  quality  of  that 
human  emotion  known  as  "mother-love." 
In  so  far  as  psychology  claims  to  determine 
upon  the  question  of  selfishness  or  unsel- 
fishness it  would  affirm  that  mother-love  is 
51 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

unselfish.  According  to  any  standard  which 
psychology  can  select,  mother-love  would 
be  considered  unselfish.  But  theology  can 
prove  that  mother-love  is  selfish  with  some 
women  and  unselfish  with  others.  The 
mother-love  of  a  woman  who  has  the  spirit 
of  a  murderess  is,  according  to  theological 
proofs,  utterly  selfish,  whereas,  according  to 
the  deductions  of  psychology,  her  mother- 
love  would  be  as  unselfish  as  that  of  a  saint. 
Such  emotions  or  loves  as  those  of  friendship 
and  benevolence  and  their  kind  are  like^vise 
declared  by  psychology  to  be  unselfish, 
whereas  theology  proves  that  as  they  exist 
in  the  lives  of  evil  men  they  are  utterly 
selfish. 

Theology  shows  that  every  man  has  his 
ruling  love.  This  ruling  love  is  invariably 
either  essentially  selfish  or  unselfish.  What 
the  quality  is  of  any  man's  ruling  love  has 
been  determined  by  the  nature  of  his  domi- 
52 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

nating  purpose  or  intention  in  respect  to 
the  supreme  things  in  life.  If  his  ruling 
love  is  essentially  unselfish,  then  all  of  his 
emotional  experiences  are  in  the  direction 
of  improvement  in  the  quality  of  all  of  his 
loves,  including  those  which  are  the  basest. 
But  with  the  man  whose  ruling  love  is 
essentially  selfish  all  of  his  emotional  ex- 
periences are  in  the  direction  of  further 
degeneration.  With  him  even  his  friend- 
ship and  benevolence  and  such  supposedly 
good  loves  are  so  misdirected  by  the  ruling 
love  as  to  disregard  the  right,  and  to  stand 
for  what  is  equivalent  to  intentional  wrong. 
Hence  mother-love  is  itself  selfish  in  a  selfish 
woman. 

All  have  seen  instances  where  the  friend- 
ships of  evil  men  have  led  them  to  sacrifice 
the  common  good  for  the  temporary  ad- 
vantages of  their  friends,  and  here  we 
have  another  illustration  of  the  selfish- 
53 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ness  of  what  psychology  would  claim  was 
unselfish. 

Many  other  illustrations  might  be  adduced 
to  show  that  whenever  psychology  attempts 
to  discriminate  between  selfish  and  unselfish 
qualities  of  human  loves  it  is  mistaken  as 
often  as  any  other  mere  guess  work  is  mis- 
taken. This  is  so  because  the  work  of  mak- 
ing such  discrimination  is  entirely  outside 
the  realm  of  its  legitimate  field. 

Psychology  can  give  its  testimony  as  to 
the  existence  of  human  emotions.  This 
fact,  indeed,  is  the  first  one  which  is  de- 
monstrated and  verified  by  personal  con- 
sciousness. Any  rational  man  must  ac- 
knowledge that  quality  is  to  be  predicated 
of  all  human  loves.  When  it  comes  to  the 
question  of  making  ourselves  acquainted 
with  quality  in  human  life,  then  we  arrive 
at  the  point  where  cross-roads  meet.  All 
must  admit,  however,  that  quality  in  any 
54 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

human  emotion,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  the 
essential  element  of  that  emotion.  One 
cannot  separate  the  idea  of  quality  from  any 
human  love  or  experience  any  more  easily 
than  he  can  separate  the  idea  of  substance 
from  any  material  object.  Hence,  any  ad- 
equate or  satisfactory  knowledge  of  Human- 
nature  must  necessarily  include  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  quality  in  the  spiritual  fabric 
of  a  human  life. 

Those  forms  of  mental  development  which 
are  conducive  to  success  in  this  world  are 
identified  with  the  natural  plane  or  merely 
surface  phenomena  of  the  mind,  and  these 
are  all  subject  to  the  scrutiny  of  psychology. 
Even  those  developments  of  the  will  which 
add  to  one's  effectiveness  as  a  material  world 
power  may  be  dealt  wuth  by  psychology. 
All  that  is  included  in  the  commonly  ac- 
cepted meaning  of  the  word  "mentality" 
is  of  the  natural  plane  or  of  the  surface 
55 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

phenomena  of  the  mind  and  can  be  dealt 
with  by  psychology.  But  psychology  can- 
not make  the  slightest  distinction  between 
those  qualities  of  human  character  which 
distinguish  an  angel  from  a  devil.  And 
yet,  the  potentialities  in  every  human  life 
are  such  as  to  reveal  illimitable  heights  in 
regeneration  and  unfathomable  depths  in 
degeneration;  and  also,  the  continuation  of 
life  to  eternity,  and  indescribable  rewards 
and  punishments.  These  potentialities  in 
human  life  represent  a  spiritual  universe  of 
phenomenal  fact  with  which  psychology  can 
have  nothing  whatsoever  to  do.  Theology, 
on  the  contrary,  can  deal  with  these  phenom- 
ena within  the  potentialities  of  the  human 
mind  and  do  it  with  an  accuracy  and  a  cer- 
tainty equal  to  the  accuracy  and  certainty 
of  science  in  its  legitimate  sphere,  as  will  be 
shown  in  this  book. 

It  should  be  understood  that,  notwith- 
56 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

standing  the  fact  that  neither  psychology 
nor  any  of  the  sciences  is  quahfied  to  dis- 
cover or  to  demonstrate  so  much  as  one 
distinctively  spiritual  truth  arising  from  the 
knowledge  of  quality  in  human  loves,  yet, 
the  majority  of  people  have  an  accurate 
knowledge  of  a  sufificient  number  of  verifi- 
able spiritual  truths  to  serve  as  the  intel- 
lectual basis  of  their  respective  religious 
faiths  so  far  as  their  faiths  are  true.  The 
question  arises,  By  what  mental  processes 
have  religious  people  arrived  at  their  knowl- 
edge of  spiritual  truths?  This  point  will 
be  dealt  with  in  succeeding  chapters,  but 
this  much  can  be  stated  here:  that  any  re- 
ligious faith  or  belief  which  does  not  rest 
securely  on  definite  and  concrete  and  de- 
monstrated spiritual  truths  as  its  basis  is 
as  insecure  as  a  house  without  a  foundation. 
It  is  the  part  of  unwarrantable  presumption 
to  assert,  however,  that  the  only  method  of 
57 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

obtaining  that  knowledge  is  by  the  use  of 
the  scientific  method.  There  is  a  spiritual 
method  which  is  analogous  to  the  scientific 
method  which  is  equally  productive  of  results. 


58 


V 


SOME  IMPORTANT  DISCRIMINATIONS 

IT  is  fundamentally  important  in  relig- 
ious thinking  to  have  a  clear  con- 
ception of  that  reality  for  which  the  word 
"truth"  stands.  And  here  I  would  re- 
mark that,  in  all  which  this  book  contains, 
the  aim  is  simply  to  bring  realities  to  view, 
and  not  in  the  least  to  contest  the  meanings 
of  words.  The  object  is  to  see  realities  and 
to  know  them,  and  afterwards,  or  at  the  same 
time,  to  use  such  words  and  phrases  in 
setting  them  forth  as  seem  most  appro- 
priate. My  plea  is  that  the  reader  look  with 
me  for  the  realities  which  are  the  objects 
of  our  search,  and  if  some  words  seem  to 
be  given  unusual  or  even  unwarranted 
meanings  it  should  be  overlooked.  Inas- 
much as  theology  is  qualified  to  bring  to 
59 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

view  many  realities  entirely  new  to  the 
world  at  present,  it  is  evident  that  either 
old  words  must  be  given  larger  meanings 
or  new  words  coined,  because  all  things  must 
have  words  or  signs  to  represent  them. 

In  a  preceding  chapter  it  was  stated  that 
"truth,"  meaning  spiritual  truth,  might 
be  defined  as  that  particular  kind  of  en- 
lightenment which  enables  a  man  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  good  and  the  evil  of 
his  own  loves,  and  to  know  how  to  deal  with 
them  for  his  own  best  spiritual  gro-wth,  and 
his  consequent  maximum  of  good  works. 
And  in  reference  to  Christ's  statement  that 
He  came  to  bear  witness  to  "the  truth"  it 
was  stated  that  the  manner  in  which  He 
dealt  with  the  emotions  or  loves  experienced 
by  Him  during  His  thirty-three  years  of 
life  in  this  world,  was  the  way  that  He 
bore  witness  to  the  truth. 

When  we  understand  that  there  exists  a 
60 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

spiritual  universe  entirely  different  from 
the  material  universe,  and  that  the  spiritual 
universe  is  composed  of  the  realities  of 
Human-nature,  then  we  make  one  of  the 
first  clear-cut  distinctions  which  enables 
us  to  think  of  "truth"  as  something  differ- 
ent from  scientific  facts.  As  stated  before, 
theology  shows  that  a  man  has  a  supreme 
interest,  and  that  this  supreme  interest  can- 
not be  discovered  by  any  method  which 
science  can  offer.  Granting  the  existence 
of  this  supreme  interest,  there  will  be  none 
to  dispute  that  all  things  in  Nature  and  in 
Human-nature  are,  first,  related  to  every 
man's  supreme  interest,  and,  secondly,  so 
related  as  to  be  either  harmful  or  helpful. 
"The  truth"  or  spiritual  truth  could  again 
be  defined  as  that  enlightenment  which 
enables  one  to  see  the  true  relationship  of 
his  present  situation  to  his  supreme  in- 
terest. 

6i 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

It  is  important  to  discriminate  between 
truth  as  it  stands  independently  of  man's 
attitude  toward  it  and  as  it  is  influenced  by 
man's  dealings  with  it.  It  is  perfectly  plain 
that  men  do  not  create  Nature.  The  truth 
that  Nature  is  we  do  not  create.  Neither 
do  men  create  gravity.  Men  do  not  create 
the  relationships  between  the  stars.  The 
chemical  relations  between  the  different 
substances  of  the  material  world  represent 
an  infinite  number  of  facts  which  may  be 
thought  of  as  entirely  distinct  from  our- 
selves, and  as  eternal,  and  as  things  which 
we  neither  created  nor  had  any  part  in 
creating.  Therefore,  it  is  simple  enough  for 
us  to  think  definitely  of  the  existence  of  an 
infinite  number  of  facts  in  Nature  as  some- 
thing entirely  apart  from  any  participation 
that  we  can  take  in  Nature  or  of  anything 
that  we  may  do  by  way  of  manufacturing 
truth. 

62 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  another  grouping  of 
facts,  infinitesimal,  almost,  comparatively, 
which  men  do  help  to  create.  For  instance, 
when  the  chemist  makes  use  of  his  knowledge 
of  science  so  as  to  arrange  the  relative 
positions  of  certain  substances  and  cause 
an  explosion,  then  the  fact  of  the  explosion 
is  partly  of  his  creation.  But  the  fact  of 
the  existence  of  the  original  chemicals 
and  of  the  peculiar  relationships  between 
them  are  eternally  and  absolutely  inde- 
pendent of  the  chemist.  Likewise,  some 
facts  concerning  such  things  as  bread  and 
butter,  and  steam-engines,  and  dynamos, 
and  clothing,  and  the  like,  are  facts,  the 
truth  of  which,  we,  as  little  finite  creatures, 
had  some  small  part  in  creating.  But  it 
should  be  understood  that  it  is  only  in  such 
an  extremely  limited  sense  that  man  is 
the  creator  of  truth. 

Science  tells  us  that  the  two  primal  reaU- 
63 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ties  in  Nature  are  matter  and  energy.  In 
the  sense  that  the  mathematician  speaks 
of  his  "theoretical  point"  in  space,  let  us 
think  of  a  theoretical  point  in  time.  At 
any  theoretical  point  in  time,  all  the  reali- 
ties of  the  universe  are  what  they  are.  At 
any  later  point  in  time,  on  account  of  change, 
all  things  are  different  from  what  they  were, 
but  are  again  what  they  are.  At  a  given 
point  in  time  then,  when  all  things  are  what 
they  are,  certain  relationships  exist  between 
each  thing  and  all  things.  Every  relation- 
ship at  a  particular  time  furthermore  bears 
its  relation  to  the  past  and  also  stands  re- 
lated to  the  future.  Matter  means  per- 
manency, and  energy  means  constant  change. 
Substance  is  eternal  and  change  is  perpetual. 
Evolution  is  a  word  which  stands  in  our 
thoughts  as  a  sign  of  this  continual  change 
of  the  relative  positions  of  the  atoms  and 
combinations  of  atoms  in  the  world. 
64 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Now,  while  our  finite  minds  can  never 
learn  and  remember  all  of  the  infinite  num- 
ber of  relationships  which  have  existed  be- 
tween material  particles  and  of  all  the 
relationships  which  are  yet  to  exist  between 
material  particles,  they  can,  nevertheless, 
grasp  and  comprehend  the  conception  of  the 
existence  of  this  infinite  number  of  rela- 
tionships. 

In  like  manner,  it  is  simple  enough  for 
us  to  conceive  of  the  existence  of  an  infinite 
number  of  past  and  present  and  future 
relationships  between  the  realities  of  Hu- 
man-nature. 

In  thinking  of  relationships  which  have 
existed  we  furthermore  think  of  relation- 
ships which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  could 
have  existed,  but  never  did  exist.  In  other 
words,  many  things  which,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  may  possibly  come  into  existence, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  never  do  come  into 
s  65 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

existence.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
many  things  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
could  not  have  existence.  For  instance, 
that  something  should  come  from  nothing, 
is,  in  the  nature  of  things  an  impossibility. 
And  again,  that  three  miles  can  be  two  miles, 
is  an  impossibility.  \Mien  we  speak  of 
the  potentialities  of  Nature  we  include  all 
those  things  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
would  be  possible,  whether  they  ever  actually 
come  into  existence  or  not.  The  potentiali- 
ties of  Nature,  however,  do  not  include  those 
things  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
could  not  come  into  existence.  It  would 
be  possible,  for  instance,  for  all  life  on  this 
planet  to  be  destroyed,  and  for  the  surface 
of  the  earth  to  be  turned  into  a  desert  or  a 
wilderness.  None  of  us,  however,  expect 
that  this  possibility  will  ever  become  a 
reality,  although  such  a  condition  exists 
potentially.  But  it  would  not  even  be 
66 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

possible  for  two  bodies  to  occupy  the  same 
space  at  the  same  time. 

In  thinking  of  Human-nature  in  terms  of 
the  realities  which  compose  it,  we  think  of 
substances  called  spirit  instead  of  matter, 
and  we  think  of  activities  called  love  instead 
of  energy.  At  any  "theoretical"  point  in 
the  life  of  any  man,  there  exist  certain  re- 
lationships between  all  things  composing 
his  life.  These  would  be  the  facts  of  phe- 
nomena as  they  exist  in  a  human  life  at  a 
given  point  of  time.  But  just  as  it  is  in 
Nature,  where  energy  is  causing  a  perpetual 
evolutionary  change  or  movement,  so  the 
emotional  and  thinking  energy  in  a  human 
being  is  causing  a  continual  evolutionary 
change  in  a  man.  The  phenomenal  facts 
in  a  human  life,  as  they  exist  at  a  given 
time,  are  the  outcome  of  all  the  facts  which 
had  theretofore  existed  throughout  its  past 
history.  Human-nature,  the  same  as  ma- 
67 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

terial  Nature,  has  within  it  certain  poten- 
tialities or  possibiHties.  But  the  alternatives 
of  possibility  in  human  life,  theology  names 
regeneration  and  degeneration.  That  which 
is  possible  in  the  Nature  of  things  for  a 
man,  is  that  he  may  either  sink  down  into 
the  very  depths  of  depravity,  or  rise  into 
the  most  exalted  heights  of  nobility  and 
power — but  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  he  should  both  sink  and  rise  at  the 
same  time. 

If  we  can  conceive  of  material  Nature  and 
of  Human-nature  as  two  great  realms, 
consisting  of  substances  whose  relation- 
ships are  constantly  changing  along  orderly 
lines,  so  as  to  produce  an  infinite  number  of 
relationships,  is  it  not  equally  as  easy  to 
conceive  of  an  Infinite  Intelligence  which 
has  a  knowledge  of  all  these  infinite  rela- 
tionships? And  there  is  no  mental  strain 
in  enlarging  our  conception  so  as  to  conceive 
68 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  this  Infinite  Intelligence  as  having  a 
knowledge  of  not  only  the  infinite  number 
of  relationships  existing  at  a  given  point 
of  time,  but  of  all  of  those  relationships 
which  had  existed  previously  to  this  given 
point  of  time,  and  also  of  all  the  relation- 
ships which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  might 
possibly  exist  in  the  future.  In  other  words, 
an  Intelligence  of  Infinite  Wisdom  would 
have  a  knowledge  of  not  only  all  existent 
relationships,  or  realities,  at  a  given  time, 
but  a  knowledge  of  all  of  the  potentialities 
residing  in  both  matter  and  spirit.  This 
conception  is  as  easily  conceivable  as  any 
ordinary  astronomical  conception.  And  no 
intelligence  could  truthfully  be  called  in- 
fimte  which  did  not  have  a  knowledge  of 
all  the  facts  or  relationships  which  are 
potential  in  the  universe  (of  both  mind  and 
matter). 

If  the  finite  realm  was  created  by  an  In- 
69 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

finite  Being,  there  must  necessarily  have 
been  a  purpose  worthy  of  the  undertaking. 
Furthermore,  that  which  has  been  created 
must  be  worthy  of  the  purpose  which  brought 
it  into  existence.  A  ghmpse  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  our  own  existence  is  here  to  be 
seen.  The  existence  of  the  universe  is 
evidence  that  God  wanted  something.  He 
is  now  gaining  or  securing  the  object  of 
His  love  from  the  things  which  transpire 
in  the  finite  realm.  All  things,  including 
men,  are  instrumentalities  toward  this  great 
end  which  is  the  object  of  God's  love.  If 
God  has  a  purpose  in  material  evolution, 
and  in  spiritual  regeneration,  then  the  most 
important  question  that  a  man  could  ask 
would  be.  What  is  that  piirpose?  In  so 
far  as  he  could  ascertain  what  that  purpose 
is,  so  far  he  would  know  what  "the  standard 
of  all  values"  is,  which  we  treated  in  Chapter 
III.  But  howsoever  imperfect  our  knowl- 
70 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

edge  may  be  respecting  God's  purposes  in 
finite  things,  we  can  nevertheless  easily 
conceive  of  God's  having  a  perfect  knowledge 
of  His  own  purposes  in  these  things.  And 
this  is  the  very  reality  for  which  the  phrase 
the  "Divine  Truth"  stands.  The  Divine 
Truth,  then,  is  God's  own  unique  and  distinc- 
tive knowledge  of  all  existent  realities — and, 
from  His  point  of  view,  He  sees  all  finite 
things  in  their  relation  to  His  purposes  in 
creating  them  and  preserving  them.  This 
is  a  conception  which  falls  easily  within  our 
mental  reach  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
no  finite  mind  can  ever  comprehend  the 
Divine  Truth,  or  think  in  terms  of  the 
Divine  Truth,  and  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  is  not  infinite  in  its  capacity  and 
hence  cannot  think  from  God's  point  of 
view.  Only  those  who  deny  the  existence 
of  a  personal  God  can  claim  the  non-exist- 
ence of  that  reality  for  which  the  term 

71 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

"Divine  Truth"  stands.  Those  who  deny 
the  existence  of  God  will,  for  the  same 
reason,  deny  the  existence  of  the  Divine 
Truth. 

The  term  "the  truth"  as  representing 
the  thing  to  which  Christ  came  to  bear 
witness,  stands  for  that  particular  knowledge 
which  is  qualified  to  lead  any  man  to  his 
very  best  possible  development  of  being, 
whatever  that  may  be;  and  it  is  the  very 
thing,  "the  truth,"  which  reveals  to  man 
the  standard  of  values  in  his  own  life  by 
which  it  is  furthermore  revealed  what  that 
is  which  is  his  best  possible  development. 

Pragmatic  philosophy  is  correct  in  its 
affirmation  that  truth  of  any  kind  is  im- 
portant to  us  only  in  so  far  as  we  make  good 
use  of  it.  Science  as  it  exists  independently 
of  theology,  endeavors  to  make  "practical" 
use  of  every  newly  discovered  scientific 
fact,  but  the  use  which  science  is  qualified 
72 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

to  make  of  any  fact  is  a  temporal  and  worldly- 
use.  In  so  far  as  such  a  use  increases  man's 
mastery  over  Nature  and  his  security  and 
happiness  in  the  world,  it  represents  a 
genuine  progress  and  an  intrinsic  worth 
of  its  kind.  That  is,  the  worth  of  all  things 
is  measured  by  the  standard  of  values  such 
as  science  is  able  to  determine.  If  a  man 
were  not  undergoing  a  vital  and  important 
change  in  the  quality  of  his  life's  love,  and 
if  he  were  not  immortal,  then  this  practical 
use  made  by  materialists  of  scientific  facts 
would  secure  the  best  blessings  within 
human  reach  and  lead  to  the  best  possible 
progress.  But  if  every  man,  during  this 
life,  is  steadily  becoming  either  more  un- 
selfish, or  more  selfish,  and  if  he  is  immortal, 
then  the  facts  of  science  may  have  some 
other  practical  use,  over  and  above  their 
temporal  and  worldly  uses,  which  regard 
certain  effects  upon  the  spiritual  life.  Prag- 
73 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

matism  may  be  interpreted  either  spirit- 
ually or  materialistically.  Materialistic  prag- 
matism ignores  the  practical  spiritual  uses 
that  are  to  be  made  of  scientific  facts. 
And  herein  it  is  as  deficient  as  all  the  ma- 
terialistic systems  of  philosophy  that  have 
preceded  it.  Spiritual  pragmatism,  how- 
ever, would  take  account  of  the  requirements 
of  the  inner  life  as  made  manifest  by  "the 
truth"  to  which  Christ  came  to  bear  witness. 

It  should  be  clearly  understood  that  real 
theology  would  not  prevent,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  it  would  insist  upon,  man's  making 
the  full  practical  material  use  which  newly 
discovered  scientific  facts  are  intended  or 
qualified  to  serve,  and  which  pragmatism 
rightly  insists  upon.  It  would  furthermore, 
however,  point  out  the  spiritual  interests 
which  are  either  being  helped  or  harmed  by 
the  methods  employed  in  making  these 
scientific  applications.  A  fact  apparently 
74 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

unknown  to  the  materialist  is  that  he  him- 
self is  being  interiorly  or  spiritually  made 
or  unmade  by  the  intentions  and  purposes 
which  he  selects  at  the  very  times  he  is 
making  "practical"  use  of  his  scientific 
facts. 


75 


VI 


DOING  one's  greatest  POSSIBLE  GOOD 


HE   reader  is  requested  to   keep  in 


1  mind  the  chief  purpose  of  this  book 
as  stated  in  the  introduction  while  reading 
each  chapter,  and  to  note  its  connection 
with  the  theme  as  a  whole.  This  particular 
chapter  is  intended  primarily  to  furnish 
illustration  of  and  emphasis  to  the  funda- 
mental importance  of  the  special  kind  cf 
knowledge  for  which  theology  stands.  There 
are  some  statements  in  this  chapter  which 
are  given  for  what  they  are  worth  with  no 
attempt  to  prove  them.  Of  course,  I  be- 
lieve them  all  to  be  true,  but  whether  per- 
fectly true  or  not,  they  will  be  seen  to  serve 
at  least  as  illustrations  of  what  are  to  be 
expected  of  theology  as  distinguished  from 
science.    Religion  will  make  but  little  further 


76 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

progress  in  this  world  until  theology  extends 
far  beyond  its  present  limitations,  and  it 
cannot  make  this  advance  until  the  dis- 
tinction is  made  clear  between  it  and  science. 

No  man  can  be  more  fortunate  than  he 
who  has  succeeded  in  acquiring  that  motive 
which  enables  him  to  rise  sufficiently  above 
his  inherent  selfish  tendencies  to  become 
thoroughly  resolved  in  purpose  and  inten- 
tion, to  try  to  his  utmost  throughout  life, 
to  do  his  very  greatest  possible  amount  of 
good;  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  his  maxi- 
mum of  good.  With  the  man  who  wants 
to  do  good,  and  whose  dominant  intention 
and  purpose  are  to  do  his  very  maximum  of 
good,  the  first  problem  that  towers  ominously 
in  front  of  him  is  that  of  knowing  how  to 
do  it.  To  do  good  or  to  serve  requires  first 
of  all  knowledge. 

This  is  why  a  receptive  attitude  toward 
truth  is  the  first  essential  of  religion.  A 
77 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

"receptive  attitude"  toward  truth  means 
a  genuine  affection  for  truth  and  a  loyalty 
to  it  sufficient  to  enable  a  man  to  be  sub- 
missive to  any  sacrifice  which  truth  might 
impose.  This  affection,  thus  described,  is 
in  essence  love  to  God  and  to  fellow-man. 
As  we  proceed  with  this  subject  it  will 
become  evident  that  the  receptive  attitude 
toward  truth  means  vastly  more  than  many 
self-deceived  persons  think  it  does  who  sup- 
pose that  they  possess  this  attitude.  There 
are  selfish  affections,  inherent  in  the  human 
heart,  which,  unless  overcome,  prevent  men 
from  really  attempting  to  do  their  greatest 
good  in  the  world.  These  selfish  affections 
are  so  numerous  that,  as  fast  as  some  are 
overcome,  new  ones  force  themselves  into 
the  arena.  Hence,  the  work  of  overcoming 
them  is  a  lifelong  task.  Every  conflict  or 
every  step  in  this  progress  involves  new 
spiritual  problems.  This  necessitates  life- 
78 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

long  study,  which  means  an  ever  increasing 
knowledge  in  spiritual  things. 

What  will  be  surprising  to  many  is  the 
fact  that  the  very  first  or  primary  knowledge 
which  is  indispensable  at  the  very  beginning 
of  one's  career  of  doing  his  greatest  possible 
good,  and  which  continues  to  be  indispensable 
always,  is  that  special  knowledge  by  which 
he  may  correctly  distinguish  between  good 
and  evil.  To  do  good  a  man  must  -first 
know  what  is  good.  Here  the  standard  of 
values  treated  in  Chapter  III  and  frequently 
alluded  to  comes  to  mind  again.  This 
fact  alone  shows  that  it  is  absolutely  im- 
possible for  any  one  to  do  his  greatest  pos- 
sible good  without  theological  knowledge 
in  addition  to  scientific  knowledge.  This 
is  because  science  does  not  give  the  slightest 
intimation  of  what  good  is  per  se,  whereas 
the  showing  of  what  good  is  per  se  is  the 
distinctive  function  of  theology.  It  has 
79 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

been  pointed  out  in  previous  chapters, 
particularly  in  the  fourth  one,  where  the 
difference  is  shown  between  psychology  and 
theology,  that  theology  represents  a  field 
of  knowledge  unique  in  this,  that  it  alone 
is  qualified  to  reveal  the  difference  between 
selfishness  and  unselfishness  as  qualities  of 
human  emotions  or  loves,  which  is  the 
same  thing  as  revealing  the  difference  be- 
tween good  and  evil.  The  things  which 
are  good  for  man's  temporal  welfare  are 
not  the  things  which  are  good  per  se.  The 
only  kind  of  good  and  the  only  kind  of  well 
doing  which  science  in  general,  or  psychol- 
ogy in  particular,  can  point  to  is  temporal 
good,  which,  in  itself,  is  as  different  from 
spiritual  good  as  a  rock  is  different  from  an 
ear  of  com.  They  are  two  entirely  different 
things.  A  man  who  endeavors  to  do  his 
greatest  amount  of  good,  with  no  other 
standard  of  goodness  than  that  which  science 
80 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

sets  up,  is  as  apt  to  work  for  evil  as  he  is 
for  good,  because,  from  a  spiritual  point  of 
view,  in  that  case  he  works  altogether  in 
the  dark. 

Every  created  thing  has  its  function. 
Everything  does  good  when  it  fills  its  func- 
tion. The  function  of  gravitation  is,  among 
other  things,  to  hold  the  worlds  in  equili- 
brium. The  function  of  a  chemical  is, 
among  other  things,  to  act  upon  other  sub- 
stances according  to  its  nature.  The  func- 
tion of  a  man  is  to  do  good  to  the  full  pos- 
sibilities of  all  his  united  powers  for  good. 
A  man,  however,  differs  from  all  other  created 
things  in  this,  that  he  is  not  compelled  to 
fill  his  function,  whereas  everything  else  is 
so  compelled.  This  is  because  man  is  en- 
dowed with  some  responsibility  and  with 
spiritual  freedom. 

The  faculty  of  rationality  in  man  is 
forced  to  reason,  and  that  of  memory  is 
6  8i 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

forced  to  memorize,  and  that  of  imagination 
is  forced  to  imagine,  in  spite  of  any  opposi- 
tion a  man  might  make.  They  are  as  cer- 
tain thus  to  fulfil  these  requirements  of 
their  nature  as  the  sun  is  to  shine  and  for 
the  same  reason,  but  (and  here  is  a  most 
significant  observation)  rationality  will 
reason  in  behalf  of  doing  good  in  preference 
to  doing  evil ;  and  the  memory  will  memorize 
in  behalf  of  doing  good  in  preference  to 
doing  evil,  and  the  imagination  will  imagine 
in  behalf  of  doing  good  in  preference  to  doing 
evil,  only  when  a  man  intends  that  they 
should  and,  in  his  spiritual  freedom,  decides 
that  they  shall.  Every  man  may,  if  such 
be  his  dominant  purpose,  command  the 
entirety  of  his  faculties  and  personal  powers 
and  marshal  them,  as  in  battle  array,  for 
the  right,  or  he  may  decline  to  do  so,  which 
is  equivalent  to  working  in  behalf  of  evil. 
The  work  of  doing  good  is  vast  enough  and 
82 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

complex  enough  to  absorb  all  the  time  and 
all  the  mental  faculties  and  growing  powers 
of  a  man  to  the  end  of  this  life  and  then  on 
forever.  It  should  be  clearly  understood 
that  between  the  doing  of  all  the  good  that 
one  can  do  at  all  times,  under  all  circum- 
stances, during  all  of  life,  and  the  doing  of 
only  a  little  good  at  convenient  times, 
there  is  the  same  great  gulf  fixed  that  dis- 
tinguishes heaven  and  hell. 

It  may  be  remarked,  as  one  of  the  primer 
truths  of  theology,  that  in  carrying  out  one's 
serious  intentions  of  doing  his  maximum  of 
good,  he  is  not  called  upon  to  experience  any 
undue  soberness  of  mind  or  torturesome 
anxiety.  In  fact,  anxiety  and  fear  are  found 
to  be  evils  which  hinder  rather  than  help 
in  the  doing  of  good.  In  leading  on  and 
in  launching  out  upon  a  career  of  greatest 
possible  service  one  soon  learns  the  necessity 
of  working  easily  and  joyously.    But  to 

83 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

work  easily  and  joyously  necessitates  in 
itself  certain  fundamental  theological  knowl- 
edge. It  implies,  first  of  all,  some  degree 
of  trustfulness  in  Divine  Providence,  which, 
in  turn,  necessitates  some  knowledge  of  the 
Divine  Providence. 

Again,  the  doing  of  one's  maximum  of 
good  does  not  imply  necessarily  that  one 
should  engage  in  work  that  is  spectacular 
or  that  is,  from  worldly  standards,  seemingly 
important.  Most  persons  who  are  striving 
to  do  their  greatest  possible  good  must 
necessarily  engage  in  what  we  call  common- 
place duties  of  life.  They  will  not  be  con- 
cerned particularly  about  the  question  of 
how  great  the  work  is  which  they  are  privi- 
leged to  do.  Their  concern  wdll  be  chiefly 
wdth  the  question,  are  they  doing  the  best 
work  that  they  are  qualified  to  do?  In 
doing  the  best  work  that  one  is  qualified  to 
do,  whether  it  lead  to  obscurity  or  to  prom- 
84 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

inence,  whether  it  be  commonplace  work 
or  uncommon  work,  such  a  man  labors 
under  the  continued  necessity  of  striving 
to  acquire  additional  knowledge  for  the 
sake  of  increasing  his  effectiveness. 

Doing  good  begins  in  simple  ways,  but 
its  progress  leads  to  the  most  remote  and 
intricate  complexities  of  human  activities 
and  experiences.  When  a  child  says  its 
prayers,  obeys  its  parents,  shares  its  play- 
things with  playmates,  is  kind  to  the  do- 
mestic animals,  avoids  saying  bad  words, 
and  a  few  other  such  things,  it  does  nearly 
all  the  good  which  it  is  capable  of  knowing 
anything  about.  When  any  person  is  kind 
to  and  considerate  of  the  well-being  of 
another  person  he  does  good  in  a  simple 
way.  When  a  person  is  tempted  to  break 
one  of  the  ten  commandments,  literally 
interpreted,  which  is  to  say,  as  it  appears 
in  its  simplest  and  most  limited  aspect, 
8S 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

before  it  is  expanded  and  amplified  by  the 
rest  of  the  contents  of  the  Bible,  I  say,  when 
one  is  so  tempted  and  overcomes,  he  does 
good  in  a  simple  way.  All  of  such  good 
deeds,  however,  of  a  simple  kind,  are  rela- 
tively only  a  few  of  the  very  many  deeds 
that  a  man  does.  What  is  one  doing  during 
the  intervals  between  his  good  deeds  of  a 
simple  kind?  When  he  is  not  occupied  in 
expressing  kindness  to  a  friend,  what  is  he 
doing?  Between  the  times  when  he  has 
occasion  to  refuse  to  break  one  of  the  ten 
commandments  according  to  its  literal  in- 
terpretation, what  is  it  that  occupies  his 
thoughts  and  his  time?  These  intervening 
spaces  occupy  more  than  nine-tenths  of 
his  time,  capacities  and  energies. 

By  observing  the  spirit  of  the  command- 
ments a  person  may  see  that  he  actually 
steals,  for  instance,  whenever  he  leaves  un- 
done any  good  which  he  might  have  done, 
86 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

because  thereby  he  is  responsible  for  de- 
priving some  other  person  or  persons  of 
some  blessing  which  it  was  within  his  power 
and  was  his  duty  to  bestow.  Every  man 
has  a  right  to  all  the  good  that  he  is  capable 
of  receiving  which  is  within  the  power  of 
any  other  man  to  give  him.  This  may  sound 
strange,  but  it  is  entirely  correct.  However, 
the  good  here  spoken  of  is  the  real  kind  and 
not  the  apparent  kind.  Hence,  we  steal 
according  to  the  spirit  of  the  commandments 
whenever  we  consent  to  withhold  any  real 
good  that  we  see  it  to  be  within  our  power 
to  give  to  others.  This  question  of  studying 
the  spirit  of  the  commandments  opens  up  a 
vast  field  which  we  can  but  barely  touch 
upon  here.  When  Christ  said  that  "it 
is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth,"  He  alluded  to 
what  we  might  call  the  theological  reasons, 
which  are  the  sufficient  reasons,  for  the 
giving  of  the  commandments  in  the  first 
87 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

place.  The  primary  object  of  the  command- 
ments is  to  transform  human  character. 
The  object  is  not  that  they  are  to  be  obeyed 
for  the  simple  sake  of  obedience,  but  for 
the  sake  of  regenerating  a  man  out  of  a 
selfish  state  of  being  into  an  unselfish  state 
of  being.  The  business  of  theology,  as  al- 
ready intimated  in  this  book,  is  to  reveal 
or  to  point  out  the  psychic  or  spiritual 
phenomena  involved  in  this  regeneration  of 
the  human  soul.  In  brief,  then,  any  study 
made  of  human  loves,  in  their  relation  to 
good  and  evil  qualities,  is  a  study  of  the 
"spirit"  of  the  commandments. 

It  is  time  that  the  fact  be  known  that  men 
are  not  simpletons,  to  be  limited  to  the 
simple  aspects  of  doing  good,  for  man  has 
been  so  graciously  endowed  with  mental 
powers  by  his  Creator  as  to  be  capable  of 
directing  the  entirety  of  his  emotions,  and 
powers  of  intelligence,  and  activities  of 
88 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

body,  in  the  doing  of  good,  just  as  he  is 
capable  of  directing  his  hand  on  occasion 
into  his  pocket  for  a  dollar  to  help  a  starving 
man. 

Most  careful  note  should  now  be  made  of 
the  essential  difference  between  the  good  to 
be  done  by  a  man  and  that  to  be  done,  for 
instance,  by  a  grain  of  sand.  A  grain  of 
sand,  in  filling  its  ordained  function  in 
Nature,  may  be  said  to  be  doing  good. 
A  man  in  his  spiritual  freedom,  carrying  as 
he  does  certain  limited  though  well  defined 
responsibilities,  has  the  power  of  deter- 
mining in  large  measure  the  amount  of  good 
that  he  does  to  others;  whereas  the  grain 
of  sand  has  no  power  to  increase  or  decrease 
the  good  it  does  to  other  objects  by  its  powers 
of  relationship  to  them.  Every  man,  how- 
soever vile  and  wicked,  is  compelled  by 
Divine  Providence,  as  literally  as  is  a  grain 
of  sand,  to  do  a  certain  minimum  of  good, 
89 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

otherwise  he  would  never  have  been  created ; 
but  the  difference  between  this  minimum  of 
good,  which  a  degenerate  man  is  compelled 
to  do  against  his  will,  and  the  maximum 
of  good  which  the  same  man  might  do  if  he 
would,  is  one  of  the  most  significant  of  all 
facts  for  contemplation. 

The  principle  of  relationship  between  all 
existing  objects  shows  that  a  man  does  good 
not  only  to  the  members  of  his  family,  to  his 
next-door  neighbors  and  to  distant  relatives 
and  friends,  but  to  every  man  and  woman 
and  child  in  the  world.  As  to  quantity,  a 
man  does  vastly  more  good  to  the  untold 
and  vmknown  millions  than  to  his  compara- 
tively few  acquaintances,  and  yet,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  good  that  most  well 
intentioned  persons  do  the  millions  is  both 
unintentional  and  unobserved.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  observe  and  to  make  intentional  a 
large  part  of  the  good  that  one  does  to  the 
90 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

world's  unknown  millions.  This  requires, 
however,  the  use  of  a  mental  faculty  which 
most  persons  have  allowed  to  atrophy. 
By  cultivating  this  mental  faculty,  and  this 
desire  to  serve  in  as  large  a  way  as  possible, 
one  not  only  increases  the  amount  of  good 
he  does,  but  at  the  same  time  enlarges  his 
own  spiritual  and  mental  capacities.  Theol- 
ogy must  be  depended  upon  as  the  chief 
help  in  enabling  men  thus  to  enlarge  their 
personal  spheres  of  conscious  effort  and  the 
good  to  be  done  by  them. 

It  was  stated  above  that  all  people,  in- 
cluding the  most  degenerate,  do  good.  It 
would  be  far  better,  however,  to  deny  this 
important  fact  than  to  misunderstand  it. 
The  pervert  and  the  criminal  who  intend 
nothing  but  evil,  nevertheless  do  good, 
although  a  very  different  kind  of  good  from 
that  done  by  a  man  of  correct  intentions. 
They  do  good  the  same  as  the  grain  of  sand 
91 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

alluded  to  does  it,  entirely  by  compulsion. 
He  knows  as  little  of  the  good  that  he  does 
and  enjoys  it  as  little,  as  does  the  grain  of 
sand  know  of  or  enjoy  the  good  it  does. 
God  ordains  that  even  the  vilest  wretch 
shall  be  compelled  to  contribute  something 
of  positive  blessing  to  human  kind.  The 
difference  between  the  quality  of  the  man 
who  does  that  minimum  of  good  which  he  is 
compelled  to  do  against  his  will  and  without 
his  knowledge,  and  the  quality  of  him  who 
does  his  maximum  of  good  intentionally  and 
purposefully,  is  precisely  that  between  heaven 
and  hell,  angel  and  devil. 

Evilly  disposed  men  commit  sins  and 
crimes  and  they  do  wrong,  but  they  are 
never  permitted  to  make  spiritual  victims 
of  any  but  themselves.  This  fact  may  again 
illustrate  the  narrow  limitations  of  the  field 
of  psychology.  Psychology  would  declare 
that  the  crimes  which  men  do  result  in  more 
92 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

injury  to  the  supposed  victims  than  to  the 
perpetrators.  This  is  because  psychology 
must  judge  of  effects  as  they  are  manifest 
in  the  physical  body  and  the  natural  plane 
of  the  mind.  When  the  realities  of  the 
spiritual  planes  of  Human-nature,  already 
alluded  to,  begin  to  come  to  view,  the  fact 
becomes  most  manifest  that  certain  forms 
of  bodily  suffering,  and  of  distress  in  the 
natural  plane  of  the  mind,  when  permitted 
by  Providence,  serve  important  uses  in 
these  interior  planes.  This  is  due  to  the 
protection  of  Providence.  It  is  said  in  the 
Scriptures,  of  Christ,  "He  knew  all  men, 
and  needed  not  that  any  should  testify  of 
man:  for  He  knew  what  was  in  man." 
(John  2  :  25.)  Man's  being  what  he  is,  with 
the  most  marvelous  potentialities  residing 
within  the  interior  planes  of  his  nature, 
which  qualify  him  to  become  transformed 
into  an  unselfish  being  and  to  continue  his 
93 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

growth  forever,  is  a  leading  reason  why  there 
are  a  great  many  things  in  this  world  which 
are  not  what  they  seem  to  be.  Every 
wicked  man  tries  to  do  a  hundred  bad  things 
where  he  is  permitted  to  do  one ;  to  make  a 
hundred  apparent  victims  of  his  cruelties 
where  he  is  permitted  to  make  one.  The 
fact  is,  notwithstanding  all  the  glaring  ap- 
pearances to  the  contrary,  that  the  partic- 
ular evil  things  which  Providence  permits 
the  bad  man  actually  to  do  are  those  and 
only  those  which,  under  the  circumstances, 
result  in  some  measure  of  spiritual  good  to 
the  supposed  victims.  In  other  words  any 
person  who  is  permitted  to  be  afflicted, 
either  in  body  or  mind  or  circumstance, 
whether  the  affliction  comes  from  a  stroke 
of  lightning  out  of  the  skies,  or  from  the 
hand  of  an  assailant,  or  from  the  ingenious 
device  of  some  designing  and  scheming  devil- 
incarnate,  is,  under  the  circumstances,  be- 
94 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ing  acted  upon  beneficently,  because  the 
affliction  so  allowed  by  Providence,  under 
the  circumstances,  so  acts  upon  the  interior 
realities  of  the  mind  as  to  set  them  as  nearly 
right  as  the  man  himself,  in  his  spiritual 
freedom,  will  allow,  in  their  relation  to  the 
man's  immortal  career  of  useful  achievement 
and  personal  happiness.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
Divine  Providence  utilizes  the  deeds  of  evil 
men  just  as  He  utilizes  the  destructive  ele- 
ments and  forces  in  Nature,  in  serving  the 
best  and  permanent  interests  of  every  man 
who  seems  to  be,  from  a  natural  point  of 
view,  a  pitiable  victim.  Owing,  however, 
to  the  significance  of  man's  spiritual  freedom, 
and  to  the  unalterable  responsibility  upon 
the  shoulders  of  every  man,  without  which 
he  would  not  be  a  man,  it  must  inevitably 
be  that  he  who  is  willing  to  do  evil  and  to 
victimize  his  neighbor  in  material  and  natural 
ways,  makes  a  spiritual  victim  of  himself. 
95 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

This  is  what  is  inferred  by  Christ's  words, 
"It  must  needs  be  that  offences  come,  but 
woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the  offence  Com- 
eth." God  would  no  more  allow  one  man  to 
do  positive  spiritual  injury  to  another  man 
than  He  would  do  harm  Himself.  This  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  God  never  permits 
any  bodily  or  mental  affliction  which  does 
not  serve  some  transcendently  important 
interest  in  the  interior  life  of  the  individual 
who  is  permitted  to  suffer.  Hence  it  is 
that  every  man  is  securely  and  absolutely 
protected  by  the  love  and  wisdom  and 
power  of  God  from  any  spiritual  injuries  in 
times  of  catastrophe  caused  by  nature,  or 
by  the  seeming  thoughtlessness  of  men,  or 
even  by  intentional  harm  of  evil  men.  In 
other  words,  no  combination  of  circum- 
stances of  any  kind  has,  in  all  the  history 
of  the  world,  ever  been  allowed  to  do  spiritual 
harm  to  any  man.  If  it  be  asked.  Wherein 
96 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

does  spiritual  harm  ever  come  to  a  man,  the 
answer  is  simple  but  complete:  every  man 
brings  upon  himself  any  spiritual  harm  that 
he  sustains,  by  his  own  wilful  and  voluntary 
antagonism  to  what  he  sees  to  be  right  in 
contrast  with  wrong.  Christ  declared,  "  This 
is  the  condemnation  that  light  is  come  into 
the  world  and  men  loved  darkness  rather 
than  light  because  their  deeds  were  evil." 
And  again  he  said,  "And  ye  will  not  come 
to  me,  that  ye  might  have  life."  It  should 
be  known  and  thoroughly  comprehended 
that  no  man  determines  the  particulars  of 
his  own  environment,  but  he  does  deter- 
mine his  attitude  toward  the  particulars  of 
his  environment.  If  his  attitude  toward 
his  environment  is  that  of  a  man  whose 
dominant  intention  and  purpose  is  to  do 
his  maximum  of  good  as  best  he  can  under 
his  circumstances  of  environment,  then  that 
man's  eternal  triumph  is  assured.  It  is 
7  97 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

important  to  note,  in  this  connection,  that 
the  statement  that  wicked  men  are  com- 
pelled by  Providence  to  do  a  minimum  of 
good  does  not  imply  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  evil.  Indeed,  the  fact  of  evil  is  one 
of  the  most  fundamental  facts  of  theology, 
and  the  spectacle  of  evil  men  who  have  vic- 
timized themselves  makes  this  fact  as  mani- 
fest as  it  is  important. 


98 


VII 


THE    ANALOGY    BETWEEN    APPLIED  SCIENCE 
AND  APPLIED  THEOLOGY 

JUST  as  there  is  an  analogy  between 
Nature  and  Human-nature,  science 
and  theology,  material  phenomena  and  their 
corresponding  spiritual  facts,  so  likewise 
there  is  an  analogy  between  the  application 
of  scientific  knowledge  and  the  application 
of  theological  knowledge.  All  knowledge  is 
for  application  in  the  achievement  of  useful 
results.  What  is  thought  to  be  useful, 
however,  is  determined  by  what  one  holds 
as  his  standard  of  values,  mentioned  in 
Chapter  III.  The  knowledge  of  any  con- 
ceivable fact  contains  intrinsic  worth  simply 
because  it  is  by  nature  an  instrumentality 
of  useful  human  achievement.  Wherever 
men  make  misuse  of  knowledge  the  blame  is 
99 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

not  with  the  truth  but  with  the  man  who 
fails  to  accept  that  which  it  places  within 
his  reach.  This  is  as  true  of  theological 
knowledge  as  of  scientific. 

All  men,  from  the  most  ignorant  to  the 
wisest,  live  and  succeed  only  in  proportion 
to  the  applications  they  make  of  such 
knowledge  as  they  have.  From  the  simplest 
movements  of  the  body,  such  as  walking 
and  wielding  the  arm,  up  to  the  most  skil- 
ful and  delicate  handling  of  implements, 
such  as  the  surgeon's  knife,  the  artist's 
brush,  or  the  author's  pen,  intelligence  or 
knowledge  is  the  directing  power.  Food, 
clothing  and  shelter  are  all  the  product  of 
applied  scientific  knowledge.  So  are  books 
and  paintings.  It  is  even  true  that  the 
very  conditions  of  life  are  such  as  to  compel 
every  man,  even  though  it  be  against  his 
will,  to  make  application  of  at  least  some  of 
his  knowledge  during  every  wakeful  hour. 

lOO 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

At  any  time  of  consciousness  a  man  is  aware 
of  something  and  this  recognition  of  "some- 
thing" is  knowledge.  That  every  man  nec- 
essarily carries  the  responsibility  for  making 
almost  constant  application  of  scientific 
knowledge  is  no  less  manifest  than  it  is 
significant.  It  means  that  the  sum  total 
of  a  man's  earthly  blessings  is  the  sum  total 
of  what  his  applications  of  knowledge,  or 
those  of  others,  have  brought  to  him. 

Many  times,  however,  information  is  mis- 
applied. Sometimes  misinformation  results 
as  disastrously  as  information  misapplied. 
With  most  men,  even  as  respects  their  scien- 
tific knowledge,  they  make  successful  ap- 
plication of  some  of  it  and  misapplication  of 
the  rest  of  it,  and  the  latter,  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  their  losses  so  nearly  approach 
their  profits  on  the  whole  that  they  are  on 
the  verge  of  disaster  most  of  their  lives. 
There  are  indeed  some  unfortunates  whose 

lOI 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

misapplications  of  knowledge  exceed  their 
applications  of  it  and  death  automatically 
puts  a  stop  to  such  a  process. 

There  are  spiritual  facts  perfectly  analo- 
gous to  these,  which  are  also  as  practically 
important  to  every  man,  and  which,  if  not 
recognized,  are  as  fatal.  Every  man,  by 
the  very  nature  of  his  being  and  conditions 
of  life,  is  either  applying  or  misapplying 
spiritual  truth  almost  constantly — just  as 
constantly  indeed  as  he  applies  or  misapplies 
scientific  knowledge.  And  he  does  this 
whether  he  knows  it  or  not.  It  is  due  to 
the  nature  of  things.  There  is  never  one 
rational  act  on  the  part  of  any  man  which 
has  not  within  it,  as  its  very  soul,  some  mo- 
tive or  intention  or  purpose  which  regards 
a  selfish  or  unselfish  end.  This  is  true  even 
with  the  man  who  knows  nothing  whatever 
of  the  difTerence  between  selfishness  and 
unselfishness.    It  is,  therefore,  of  the  very 

I02 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

conditions  of  life  itself  that  every  man  either 
applies  or  misapplies  some  theological  truth 
whenever  he  makes  the  effort  to  apply  any 
scientific  knowledge,  and  this  without  ex- 
ception. Hence,  living  religiously  or  ir- 
religiously is  involved  in  every  secular  ac- 
tivity without  exception.  And  it  should  be 
noted  that  the  correct  application  of  a  sci- 
entific fact  may  involve  a  misapplication  of  a 
theological  truth.  The  proprietor  of  a  gamb- 
ling den,  for  instance,  applies  electrical 
knowledge  to  the  lighting  of  his  death-trap 
of  an  establishment  as  correctly  as  church 
deacons  do  in  lighting  a  church.  The 
successful  business  genius  often  applies  eco- 
nomic knowledge  more  accurately  and  scien- 
tifically when  he  subverts  the  law  and  makes 
other  men  victims  of  injustice  than  many 
an  honest  and  less  successful  business  man 
does  when  conforming  to  the  right.  Reli- 
gion then  is  not  a  Sunday  affair  any  more 
103 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

than  it  is  a  Monday  affair,  and  theology  is 
not  for  some  one  phase  of  life  alone,  such  as 
worship,  or  only  for  special  occasions  in  life, 
such  as  weddings  and  funerals. 

Never  in  the  history  of  the  church  has 
greater  emphasis  been  given  to  the  necessity 
of  applying  religion  to  life  than  during  the 
past  decade.  And  this  emphasis  is,  for- 
tunately, increasing  with  portentous  aspect 
to  many  an  entrenched  iniquity.  On  the 
whole,  however,  and  comparatively  speaking, 
the  religious  world  is  in  most  distressing 
and  perilous  darkness  as  to  the  concrete 
and  specific  applications  to  be  made.  The 
world  is  indeed  languishing  for  the  applica- 
tion of  religion  to  life — but! — the  cry  is 
going  up,  "What  is  religion  that  it  may  be 
known  what  is  to  be  applied  to  life?"  Mani- 
festly religion  cannot  be  applied  to  life  until 
it  is  first  interpreted  in  terms  of  the  concrete 
and  the  real.  The  religious  world  today  is 
104 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

practically  without  a  theology.  The  pro- 
phet's bewailing  exclamation  was  never 
more  applicable  to  the  church  universal 
than  it  is  today,  "Therefore,  my  people  are 
gone  into  captivity  because  they  have  no 
knowledge!"    (Isaiah  5  :  13.) 

The  men  of  this  century  have  been  so 
overawed  by  the  extraordinary  and  rapidly 
succeeding  achievements  of  science  that 
they  look  upon  material  achievements  as 
representing  their  greatest  interests.  The 
astounding  scientific  achievements  of  the 
past  century  are  certainly  most  significant 
and  important,  but  their  value  consists  in 
something  different  from  what  most  men 
suppose  it  to  be.  If  these  wonderful  things 
that  our  eyes  look  upon,  coming  to  pass 
outside  of  us,  were  not  related  in  some  vital 
way  to  things  developing  in  the  heart  or 
character  within,  they  would  be  utterly 
without  value  and  without  significance. 
105 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

In  other  words,  if  the  dazzling  triumphs 
of  civilization,  in  these  recent  days,  did  not 
represent  equally  significant  contributions 
to  the  spiritual  culture  of  men  individually, 
and  to  the  human  race  collectively,  all  would 
be  a  veritable  sham.  Does  not  the  capacity 
or  ability  of  a  man  to  enjoy  and  see  what  is 
valuable  determine  the  value  of  the  thing 
for  him?  Wherein  would  the  value  of  any 
earthly  thing  be  found  if  men  had  no  ability 
to  see  it  correctly  or  to  enjoy  it  legitimately? 
Spiritual  culture  is  a  term  which  is  to  most 
people  representative  of  a  vague  abstraction, 
although,  to  be  sure,  one  to  which  they 
attach  great  value.  This,  however,  does 
not  make  less  real  the  fact  that  spiritual 
culture  has  itself  made  splendid  progress. 
The  need  of  the  hour  is  to  know  what  spirit- 
ual culture  is.  Real  theology  enables  men 
to  know  the  concrete  side  of  this  wonder- 
ful abstraction. 

1 06 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

It  is  the  nature  of  men  to  conceive  of 
certain  objects  of  desire  before  striving  to 
possess  them.  It  is  Hke  seeing  objects  in 
the  road  ahead  of  one.  And  before  reaching 
any  destination  one  must  travel  over  all 
of  the  intervening  space.  A  young  man, 
for  instance,  looks  forward  to  the  ownership 
and  occupancy  of  a  comfortable  home.  To 
own  a  home  is  a  goal.  He  works  hard  and 
is  saving  of  his  means,  and  by  and  by, 
if  not  prevented  by  unexpected  circum- 
stances, he  gains  the  object  of  his  desire, 
which  has  been  in  his  mind  but  not  in  his 
possession  for  a  long  while. 

Note  a  parallel:  When,  by  the  aid  of 
theological  knowledge,  we  acquire  the  habit 
of  thinking  as  definitely  about  the  sub- 
stances of  the  soul  as  we  do  now  about 
material  realities,  we  will  conceive  of  pos- 
sible spiritual  attainments  which  will  be 
to  us  objects  of  thought  as  definite  in 
107 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

their  outline  as  a  future  home  or  a  large 
bank  account. 

Consequently,  we  will  do  the  specific 
things  which  truth  requires  of  us  (which  are 
required  of  us  by  the  nature  of  things)  for 
making  ourselves  the  possessors  of  what  we 
foresee  in  advance,  by  the  aid  of  spiritual 
enlightenment,  to  be  good  and  desirable. 
For  illustration,  a  man  who  finds  himself 
influenced  more  or  less  by  the  spirit  of  re- 
venge may,  if  he  tries,  foresee,  as  a  definite 
object,  an  improvement  in  his  own  character 
which,  when  attained,  will  enable  him  to 
retain  all  necessary  motives  for  self-protec- 
tion and  defence  without  experiencing  the 
murderous  emotion  of  revenge.  This  change 
of  character  becomes  to  him  a  spiritual  goal. 
Whether  such  achievement  is  close  at  hand 
or  a  long  distance  away  will  be  dependent 
upon  circumstances,  but  by  the  aid  of 
theological  knowledge  he  will  be  able  to 
io8 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

make  definite  progress  toward  it,  by  definite 
means  and  methods,  just  as  he  would  make 
progress  toward  any  material  object  of 
desire. 

In  making  spiritual  progress  then,  just 
as  in  making  material  progress,  it  should 
be  borne  in  mind  that  there  are  goals  to 
be  reached,  values  to  be  gained,  great 
achievements  to  be  realized,  which  are  as 
yet  in  the  future.  By  spiritual  perception  we 
foresee  some  of  them  as  desirable.  It  may 
be,  however,  and  is  generally  the  case,  as 
it  is  likewise  the  case  in  the  pursuit  of 
worldly  gains,  that  some  work  and  trials 
stand  between  us  and  their  attainment. 
Thus  it  is,  that  knowledge  of  desirable 
spiritual  acquirements  usually  comes  in 
advance  of  possessing  them — and  so  also 
must  the  application  of  spiritual  knowl- 
edge precede  the  attainment. 

This  fact,  namely,  that  both  knowledge 
109 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

and  its  application  must  precede  the  ac- 
quirement of  the  best  of  the  spiritual  things 
to  be  had,  can  best  be  understood  perhaps 
when  interpreted  in  relation  to  or  in  terms 
of  our  personal  happiness.  This  is  because 
we  naturally  identify  all  of  our  experiences 
according  to  their  relation  to  happiness  or 
suffering.  This  necessity,  then,  of  first  see- 
ing the  goal,  and  of  then  applying  the  neces- 
sary knowledge  for  reaching  it,  means  that, 
in  spiritual  experience,  as  well  as  in  worldly 
experience,  a  permanent  joy  must  sometimes 
be  purchased  with  a  temporary  pain. 

This  observation  opens  to  view  some  highly 
important  and  practical  spiritual  verities. 
Happiness  is  the  experience  of  a  love  grati- 
fied. The  things  which  bring  happiness 
to  one  are  altogether  determined  by  the 
nature  of  one's  loves.  Whatever  it  is  that 
a  man  loves  is  qualified  to  bring  him  hap- 
piness— if  he  can  get  it.    Hence,  it  may  be 

I  lO 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

seen — and  this  is  fundamental — that  it  is 
not  the  purpose  of  religion  to  give  a  man  the 
things  that  he  wants  or  loves  but  rather  to 
give  him  the  wants  or  loves,  which  he  ought 
to  have.  Wanting  what  one  cannot  have  is 
a  form  of  suffering. 

All  loves  which  are  evil  or  selfish  (accord- 
ing to  the  spiritual  standard)  are  centered 
upon  objects  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
cannot  be  granted,  except  temporarily  or 
most  scantily,  because  they  involve  either 
the  eventual  destruction  of  others,  or  event- 
ual suicide.  The  love  of  rule,  for  instance, 
is  an  infernal  love,  which,  if  not  restrained 
voluntarily,  must  be  arbitrarily  opposed, 
in  time,  by  those  laws  of  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse which  prevent  the  madness  of  some 
individuals  from  destroying  the  race.  Na- 
poleon's sitting  with  gnashing  teeth  and 
kicking  the  stones  of  St.  Helena  is  a  vivid 
symbol  of  the  final  destiny  of  all  such  loves 
III 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

as  selfish  ambition,  revenge,  and  hate. 
It  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  all  selfish 
loves  which  are  not  voluntarily  opposed 
and  restrained  by  a  religious  life  lead,  in 
the  end,  to  the  suffering  of  wanting  what 
cannot  be  had.  The  depth  or  intensity  of 
this  hell  is  equal  to  the  burning  and  persis- 
tency of  such  loves — either  here  or  here- 
after. Character  then  is  primarily  a  matter 
of  one's  love  capacity — one  has  capacity 
for  loving  and  enjoying  what  ?  This  "  what " 
is  written  across  that  great  gulf  spoken  of 
by  Christ  as  being  fixed  between  heaven 
and  hell. 

All  loves,  on  the  other  hand,  which  are  un- 
selfish (according  to  the  spiritual  standard) 
are  centered  upon  objects  which  can  be 
granted  freely  and  fully  because  they  regard 
primarily  and  conduce  to  the  universal  good. 
Happiness,  therefore,  with  one  whose  loves 
are  altogether  unselfish,  is  limited  only  by 

112 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

the  finiteness  of  his  capacity — whatever 
that  may  be. 

The  universal  good  is  manifestly  an  object 
as  stupendous  as  the  universe.  And  the 
knowledge  of  it  is  necessarily  gained  grad- 
ually. This  knowledge  so  gained  is  the 
particular  kind  of  knowledge  already  re- 
ferred to  which  it  is  the  function  of  theology 
and  not  of  science  to  deal  with.  The  loves 
which  conduce  to  the  universal  good  may 
be  innumerable,  because  innumerable  loves 
are  potential  in  Human-nature — and  the 
opposing  loves  which  mitigate  against  the 
universal  good  may  likewise  be  without 
number.  Hence,  he  who  takes  for  granted 
that  he  can  render  his  best  service  to  the 
universal  good  with  anything  less  than  the 
very  best  intelligence  that  he  can  cultivate, 
is  not  only  a  shallow  minded,  but  at  heart 
an  evilly  disposed,  person.  This  observa- 
tion only  emphasizes  how  indispensable  an 
8  113 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

adequate  theology  is,  and  then  how  indis- 
pensable is  the  application  of  the  truth  which 
this  theology  supplies. 

If  the  loves  of  men  were  unselfish  to  begin 
with,  if  men  wanted  only  the  right  things, 
then  there  would  be  no  more  suffering  in 
the  earth  than  there  is  in  heaven.  But  such 
is  not  the  reality,  as  universal  experience 
testifies.  The  loves  which  conduce  to  the 
universal  good,  and  which  are  unselfish 
according  to  the  real  standard,  and  which 
are  freely  granted  all  the  objects  to  which 
they  attach  themselves,  and  which  induce  a 
happiness  limited  only  by  the  finiteness  of 
one's  capacity  for  happiness,  these  loves, 
to  repeat,  are  to  be  acquired.  To  acquire 
them  becomes  the  chief  pursuit  in  life  with 
the  truly  religious  man.  The  business  of 
acquiring  these  loves  was  shown  in  Chapter 
VI  to  involve  the  doing  of  one's  greatest 
possible  good.  From  the  standpoint  of 
114 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

the  spiritual  standard  of  goodness  it  is  seen 
that  these  two  things  are  equivalents :  work- 
ing to  acquire  unselfishness  for  one's  self 
as  the  chief  pursuit  in  life  (when  the  mean- 
ing of  unselfishness  is  understood)  is  the 
equivalent  of  striving  to  do  one's  greatest 
possible  good  as  the  chief  pursuit  in  life. 
This  spiritual  mathematics,  however,  to  be 
seen  clearly,  requires  first  some  comprehen- 
sion of  the  standard  of  values  already  al- 
luded to. 

If,  by  spiritual  knowledge,  we  see  some 
definite  quality  of  unselfishness  yet  to  be 
acquired,  a  greater  spiritual  bravery  than 
as  yet  possessed,  for  instance,  and  which 
can  be  secured  by  methods  which  have 
been  made  plain,  is  it  not  manifest  that  our 
condition  then  becomes  that  of  being 
obliged  (by  duty  to  ourselves)  to  strive  to 
acquire  an  object  which  we  do  not  as  yet 
love?  To  the  extent  that  we  are  spiritual 
115 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

cowards  we  hate  spiritual  bravery.  This 
then  is  the  predicament  of  having  to  work 
to  acquire  a  love  for  what  one  does  not  as 
yet  love.  Spiritual  truth  shows  in  this  situ- 
ation that  one  should  work  to  acquire 
bravery  in  place  of  cowardice.  In  any  work 
of  this  kind  for  what  one  does  not  want 
there  is  involved,  necessarily,  more  or  less 
of  hardship  and  trial.  ]\Iost  of  the  unselfish 
loves,  which  we  foresee  by  spiritual  light 
as  objects  indispensable  to  our  welfare, 
are  actually  antagonistic  to  the  loves  which 
are  at  present  dominant;  and  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  there  is  a  price  to  be  paid  in 
the  coin  of  unpleasant  experience  for  nearly 
every  gain  we  make  in  unselfish  acquire- 
ment. Whenever  spiritual  truth  brings  to 
view  any  new  unselfish  love,  as,  for  instance, 
a  purer  and  truer  spiritual  bravery  than 
the  one  at  present  established  in  the  life, 
one  which  springs  from  a  rational  trust  in 
ii6 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Divine  Providence,  it  furthermore  shows 
that  the  purer  bravery  would  be  more  con- 
ducive to  the  universal  good  if  it  could  be 
acquired  so  as  to  rule  spontaneously  and 
joyously  with  no  handicaps  of  fear  and  anx- 
iety. At  present,  however,  inasmuch  as  it 
has  not  yet  been  acquired,  the  idea  of  taking 
the  seeming  risks  which  such  bravery  would 
involve  and  necessitate  stirs  up  all  the 
anxieties  and  fears  which  are  at  present 
dominant  and  which  have  to  be  eradicated 
in  the  process  of  acquiring  the  indispensable 
bravery.  To  force  one's  self  to  act  as  though 
spiritually  brave  when  one  is  a  spiritual 
coward  is  more  or  less  torturesome.  But  to 
permit  one's  self  the  indulgence  or  the  exhila- 
ration of  exercising  spiritual  bravery  when 
one  is  truly  brave  is  blissful.  The  process 
of  suppressing  the  psychic  opposition  and 
of  doing  what  is  necessary  to  become  spirit- 
ually brave,  while  one  is  yet  a  spiritual  cow- 
117 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ard,  requires  the  right  applications  of  theo- 
logical knowledge,  and  these  always  involve 
more  or  less  of  suffering.  This  is  the 
"psychology"  of  temptations.  It  also 
points  out  the  spiritual  reality,  in  actual 
experience,  which  is  involved  in  obeying 
the  Lord's  command  to  take  up  the  cross 
and  follow  Him. 

Nearly  all  men  will  say  that  they  want 
to  know  the  truth,  and  that  they  would  be 
loyal  to  the  truth,  and  that  they  want  to 
attain  to  the  highest  of  what  is  potentially 
possible  in  them  by  way  of  true  human 
growth  or  development.  And  they  will 
believe  themselves  to  be  honest  in  this 
assertion.  Undoubtedly  it  is  true  that  all 
men  want  the  best  of  what  they  are  capable 
of  potentially.  But! — unfortunately,  there 
are  other  things  which  most  of  them  want 
more.  If  it  were  not  that  men  love  things 
which  prevent  regeneration  better  than  they 
ii8 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

love  regeneration  itself,  then  all  men  would 
live  lives  as  nearly  perfect  as  is  possible 
for  men  to  live.  There  is  a  spiritual  law, 
as  powerful  and  as  certain  in  its  operation 
as  the  laws  which  sustain  the  universe, 
which  determines  that  any  man  shall  ac- 
tually be  led  in  the  normal  and  orderly 
development  of  his  highest  self,  and  so  as 
to  come  into  the  actual  realization  of  the 
very  best  states  of  being  that  are  in  him 
potentially — IF — he  wants  this  best  possible 
growth  more  than  he  wants  any  and  all 
things  else  besides.  Spiritual  degenerates 
are  those  and  only  those  who  allow  them- 
selves to  want  more  than  the  growth  itself, 
things  which  prevent  their  growth.  It  is 
astounding  how  many  things  there  are 
which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  are  incom- 
patible with  real  and  genuine  human  growth 
to  which  a  man's  selfish  tentacles  attach 
themselves,  and  which  men  allow  to  take 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

first  place  in  the  realm  of  their  affec- 
tions. 

The  chief  importance  of  these  observa- 
tions is  to  press  home  the  necessity,  first,  of 
gaining  an  ever  increasing  knowledge  of 
distinctively  spiritual  things;  and,  secondly, 
of  making  a  faithful  and  persistent  applica- 
tion of  all  such  knowledge  to  life. 


I20 


VIII 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SCIENCES  OF  THE  FUTURE 

IF  the  foregoing  observations  concerning 
the  analogy  between  material  and 
spiritual  things  are  correct,  then  there  is 
no  material  substance,  no  mode  of  activity 
in  matter,  no  scientific  fact  potential  in 
Nature,  which  does  not  imply  the  exist- 
ence of  what  might  be  termed  its  counter- 
part spiritual  reality.  Hence,  the  facts  of 
mathematics,  for  instance,  are  analogous  to 
another  set  of  facts  which  function  in  the 
realm  of  spirit  just  as  perfectly  as  mathe- 
matics do  in  the  realm  of  matter.  And 
again,  the  facts  of  geology  are  analogous  to 
another  set  of  facts  which  function  as  per- 
fectly in  the  realm  of  spirit  as  those  of 
geology  do  in  the  realm  of  matter.  And 
again,  the  facts  of  psychology  or  the  facts 

121 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  economics  or  the  facts  of  astronomy  or 
the  facts  of  any  other  of  the  natural  sciences 
are  analogous  to  another  corresponding  set 
of  facts  which  function  as  perfectly  in  the 
realm  of  spirit  as  the  facts  of  any  of  these 
natural  sciences  do  in  the  realm  of  matter. 

To  illustrate  this  important  fact  we  will 
consider  some  analogies  between  facts  of 
chemistry  and  physics,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  facts  of  the  spiritual  sciences  correspond- 
ing to  these,  on  the  other. 

Some  very  surprising  and  peculiar  rela- 
tionships between  material  substances  are 
brought  to  light  by  chemistry  and  physics. 
The  scientist,  by  the  simple  knowledge  of  a 
few  of  the  eternally  existent  relationships 
between  certain  substances,  is  enabled  to 
produce  certain  marvelous  effects  that  would 
have  looked  like  miracles  a  few  years  ago. 
He  needs  only,  for  instance,  to  cause  water 
to  touch  certain  chemical  combinations  to 

122 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

produce  fire,  to  bring  two  solid  bodies  into 
contact  to  produce  terrific  explosion,  to 
place  one  chemical  near  another  to  turn  a 
solid  to  liquid  or  to  gas,  or,  in  the  reverse 
order,  to  turn  the  gas  or  the  liquid  into  a 
solid. 

In  man's  struggles  and  conflicts  with 
Nature  perhaps  no  greater  obstruction  has 
lain  athwart  his  path  than  what  is  called 
friction,  which  necessitates  nearly  all  muscu- 
lar activity.  This  obstacle  is  now,  many 
times,  all  but  vanquished  by  power  which 
has  been  generated  by  the  application  of 
knowledge  to  inanimate  matter  instead  of 
to  the  muscles  of  the  body.  This  obstacle 
has  been  so  well  mastered  by  the  aid  of 
power  derived  from  steam  and  electricity 
and  chemical  action  that,  on  the  whole, 
men  can  accomplish,  with  a  given  amount 
of  muscular  power,  perhaps  a  thousand 
times  more  than  they  formerly  could. 
123 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Chemistry  alone  is  enabling  human  in- 
telligence to  command  a  vast  and  perfectly 
organized  and  ever  increasing  army  of  in- 
animate soldiers  known  as  chemicals,  which, 
in  absolutely  fearless  and  implicit  obedience, 
are  waging  war  and  levying  heavy  tribute 
upon  the  rigorous  climates  and  the  storms 
and  the  deserts  and  the  mountain  barri- 
cades and  the  other  host  of  giant  forces 
which  have  always  arrayed  themselves  in 
opposition  to  man's  sustaining  and  per- 
fecting himself  in  the  world.  In  their 
aggression,  they  even  explore  and  invade 
hitherto  unknown  provinces  of  wealth  which 
are  made  to  yield  thereafter  a  perpetual 
tribute.  For  example,  certain  chemicals 
have  been  the  efficient  agents  to  penetrate, 
cut  and  divide,  by  so-called  chemical  action, 
certain  worthless  complex  substances  so 
as  to  produce  many  exceedingly  valuable 
parts.  A  striking  illustration  of  this  is 
124 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

seen  in  what  the  chemist  does  with  coal 
tar.  Coal  tar,  which  was  thrown  away  as 
useless  only  a  few  years  ago,  is  now  broken 
up  and  separated  by  chemical  power  into 
hundreds  of  commercially  valuable  products. 
Thus,  the  chemist,  by  his  command  of  chemi- 
cals as  his  inanimate  army  of  soldiers,  has 
invaded  and  vanquished  this  province  of 
material  substance  known  as  coal  tar,  and 
has  not  only  brought  home  rich  spoils  from 
the  field  of  battle,  but  has  established  a 
permanent  kingdom  from  which  to  draw 
perpetual  tribute.  This  is  an  achievement 
which  neither  the  lever,  hydraulic  pressure, 
steam-engines,  electric  motor,  cannon,  ships 
of  war,  nor  indeed  any  form  of  multiplied 
effectiveness  of  human  muscle,  could  ever 
accomplish. 

The  question  now  arises,   what  things 
existing  in  Human-nature  can  be  described 
as  being  analogous  to  these  scientific  phe- 
125 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

nomena  enumerated,  and  thereby  be  made 
to  serve  as  illustrations  of  the  possibility  of 
a  spiritual  chemistry  and  other  spiritual 
sciences?  If  any  one  spiritual  science  can 
be  shown  to  have  potential  existence,  then 
by  implication  the  other  spiritual  sciences 
would  be  proved  to  have  potential  existence. 
If  they  have  potential  existence,  they  are 
only  waiting  to  be  discovered. 

Attention  has  been  called  to  the  ceaseless 
struggle  for  existence  which  Nature  itself 
has  imposed  upon  man.  The  rigorous  cli- 
mates, the  deserts,  the  storms  and  the 
mountain  barricades  have  been  alluded  to 
as  representative  of  an  army  of  giant 
forces  that  have  been  arrayed  in  opposition 
to  man's  sustaining  and  perfecting  himself 
in  the  world.  These  hostile  forces  and 
conditions  of  Nature  have  claimed  more 
human  lives  than  all  the  wars  of  history. 
What  things  are  there,  then,  in  Human- 
126 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

nature  which  seem  to  correspond  to  the 
wild,  portentous  and  life-destroying  ele- 
ments of  Nature?  They  may  be  brought 
to  light  in  dim  outline  by  some  other  ques- 
tions. In  what  human  heart  has  the  ther- 
mometer, so  to  speak,  not  gone  down  many 
times  to  zero  in  the  realm  of  its  altruistic 
or  unselfish  affections?  Have  not  our  ten- 
derest  sentiments  and  emotions  seemed  to 
freeze  sometimes  on  account  of  the  un- 
expected necessities  of  life  and  harsh  con- 
ditions? Is  there  not  something  here  to 
suggest  spiritual  climates?  Have  we  never 
experienced  the  storms  of  passion?  Have 
not  states  of  pessimism  and  stoicism  and 
gloom  spread  out  like  vast  areas  of  deserts 
in  our  experiences?  Have  not  false  ideals 
and  unreal  and  impossible  ambitions  con- 
fronted our  spiritual  progress  as  though 
they  were  impassable  mountain  barricades? 
By  inheritance  and  inherent  nature  there 
127 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

exist,  potentially,  in  every  man,  those  evil 
emotions  or  affections  or  loves  which  cor- 
respond exactly  to  the  destructive  forces 
of  Nature,  and  they  await  only  the  fullness 
of  time  and  the  favorable  circumstances 
to  express  themselves  on  the  plane  of  con- 
sciousness in  the  form  of  veritable  experi- 
ences. If  the  man  is  not  prepared  to  deal 
with  these  destructive  spiritual  or  emotional 
forces  within  him,  which  correspond  to  the 
portentous  things  of  Nature,  because  of  a 
lack  of  spiritual  knowledge  and  right  spiritual 
intentions,  then  he  is  as  certain  to  be  either 
spiritually  destroyed,  handicapped  or  wounded 
as  the  man  who,  from  one  cause  or  an- 
other, becomes  the  victim  of  some  ruthless 
force  of  Nature. 

There  are  some  spiritual  facts  analogous 
to  chemical  and  physical  facts,  the  knowledge 
of  which  gives  one  the  power  to  resist  certain 
of  his  selfish  tendencies,  just  as  the  knowledge 
128 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  particular  chemical  and  physical  relations 
gives  one  the  power  to  resist  chemical  at- 
traction, friction,  adhesion,  cohesion. 

A  man's  will  power  may  very  truly  be 
compared  to  his  muscle  power.  An  evil 
man  often  has  as  strong  a  will  as  a  good  man. 
The  will  is  a  thing  which  can  be  aided  and 
its  effectiveness  multiplied  in  behalf  of  the 
regeneration  of  one's  character  by  spiritual 
knowledge,  quite  as  much  as  muscle  power 
can  be  aided  and  its  effectiveness  multi- 
plied in  behalf  of  physical  achievements 
by  scientific  knowledge.  The  power  which 
knowledge  has  in  a  man's  life  is  something 
tremendous,  and  few  persons  have  ever 
given  it  the  consideration  it  deserves.  The 
knowledge  of  the  certainty  of  imprisonment 
or  of  the  electric  chair,  for  instance,  exerts 
a  power  in  the  conduct  of  criminally  dis- 
posed persons  as  much  greater  than  their 
will  power  as  blasting  powder  is  greater  in 
9  129 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

power  than  a  man's  right  arm.  The  knowl- 
edge of  reasonable  certainty  of  material 
success  sometimes  multiplies  the  effective- 
ness of  a  man's  will  power  several  fold  in 
remaining  steadfast  and  faithful  at  a  hard 
post  of  duty.  The  power  of  religious  or 
theological  knowledge  is  equally  as  great 
with  the  will  in  enabling  a  man  to  keep  in 
the  path  of  virtue  and  righteousness.  Think 
of  the  difference  between  the  actual  knowl- 
edge of  immortality  and  the  uncertain 
hope  of  immortality,  as  powers  which  aid 
men  in  righteous  conduct.  Does  not  the 
former  better  equip  a  man  to  meet  some 
forms  of  temptation  than  the  other?  When 
a  man  knows  for  a  certainty  that  certain 
evil  indulgences  will  lead  to  spiritual  de- 
generation, with  its  everlasting  consequences, 
then  something  in  him  far  more  powerful 
than  will  power  prevents  him  from  even 
thinking  of  the  possibility  of  committing 
130 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

the  evil.  Spiritual  power  may  thus  be 
created  by  rightly  arranging  mental  realities. 

It  is  a  common  expression  that,  "Every 
man  has  his  price."  A  great  many  persons 
believe  this  to  be  true.  It  is  a  kind  of 
brutal  way  of  expressing  acknowledgment 
of  possible  temptations  or  tests  so  deep 
and  overpowering  as  utterly  to  baffle  the 
righteous  intention  or  good-will  of  any  weak 
mortal  of  a  man.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to 
discuss  at  any  length  this  statement,  which 
is  not  true.  Whatever  might  be  said  about 
it,  this  simple  reference  to  it  lends  tremen- 
dous emphasis  to  the  need  of  a  man  for 
some  power  to  help  him  win  in  times  of 
his  greatest  temptations.  Thus  it  may  be 
seen  that  spiritual  chemistry  and  spiritual 
physics,  so  to  speak,  are  destined  to  give 
to  regenerating  men  new  powers  for  over- 
coming temptations,  as  great,  relatively, 
as  the  new  powers  which  chemistry  and 
131 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

physics  have  given  to  scientists  for  mul- 
tiplying the  effectiveness  of  human  muscle. 
The  very  practical  importance  of  spiritual 
knowledge  is  thus  seen. 

At  the  present  stage  of  spiritual  chemis- 
try, I  do  not  suppose  that  any  one  could 
state  what  that  spiritual  thing  is  which 
corresponds  to  coal  tar.  I  cannot.  It  is 
a  substance  too  complex  to  be  easily  in- 
terpreted. One  need  go  but  a  little  way, 
however,  in  introspection,  to  observe  a 
number  of  spiritual  states  or  moods  whose 
general  characteristics  are  such  as  to  be 
suggestive  of  spiritual  things  corresponding 
to  coal  tar.  For  instance,  discouragement 
is  a  human  experience,  a  state  of  mind,  a 
spiritual  reality,  a  substance,  or  at  least  a 
form  of  love  activity,  which  displays  some 
characteristics  in  the  realm  of  spirit  as 
striking  as  those  of  coal  tar  in  the  realm  of 
matter,  and,  apparently,  in  many  respects, 
132 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

analogous  to  them.  Coal  tar,  for  instance, 
is  a  residuum  from  coal  which  remains  after 
the  illuminating  gas  has  been  extracted. 
Discouragement,  on  the  other  hand,  is  at 
least  a  residuum  from  zeal  or  ambition  which 
remains  after  hope  has  been  taken  from 
it  by  some  defeat.  Coal  tar  is  a  complex 
substance  divisible  by  chemical  action  into 
many  singulars  and  into  hundreds  of  com- 
binations of  singulars.  Discouragement  like- 
wise is  a  complex  substance  divisible  by 
a  corresponding  spiritual-chemical  action 
into  priceless  singulars.  For  instance,  by 
the  proper  treatment  of  a  mood  of  dis- 
couragement, by  the  application  of  appro- 
priate spiritual  truths  at  the  time  of  its 
experience,  a  man  may  actually  convert 
or  separate  his  mood  of  discouragement 
into  feelings  of  true  humility,  trust  in  Provi- 
dence, new  and  truer  purposes  for  right- 
eousness, and  some  others,  all  of  which  are 
133 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

of  great  intrinsic  worth  in  the  character. 
Thus  it  is  seen  that  discouragement,  the 
same  as  coal  tar,  is  a  complex  reality  which, 
taken  by  itself,  is  practically  worthless,  but 
if  treated  intelligently  is  made  to  yield 
great  values.  This  illustration  may  serve 
incidentally  in  revealing,  what  the  world 
has  been  sluggardly  slow  in  seeing,  that 
theological  verities  are  as  practically  im- 
portant in  enabling  men  to  work  great 
achievements  by  way  of  gaining  for  them- 
selves and  others  the  most  transcendent 
objects  of  life. 

Who  is  there  who  never  loved  things 
which  he  now  despises.  "WTiat  caused  the 
disintegration  or  the  corrosion  of  that  former 
love?  Whatever  it  was,  it  was  some  form 
of  spiritual  chemical  action.  Regeneration 
means  the  acquirement  of  the  ability  to 
love  unselfishly  instead  of  selfishly,  but, 
inasmuch  as  human  loves  are  so  numerous 
134 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

and  complex  that  new  ones  appear  on  the 
plane  of  consciousness  every  day,  as  long 
as  life  continues,  the  process  by  which  hu- 
man loves  are  changed  and  transformed,  to 
become  unselfish  where  they  were  selfish, 
is  suggestive  of  activities  and  relationships 
quite  as  numerous  as  all  of  those  of  which 
the  sciences  treat.  Indeed,  there  is  nothing 
in  all  the  complex  and  infinite  variety  of 
things  in  material  Nature  but  what  is  anal- 
ogous to  something  else  which  corresponds 
to  it  in  Human-nature,  and  hence,  a  spiritual 
science  for  every  material  or  natural  science, 
the  one  to  be  analogous  to  the  other,  is  not 
so  much  a  prophecy  on  my  part  as  a  vision 
of  a  present  actuality  which  implies  its 
certainty. 


135 


IX 


SOME  PROPOSED  SUBSTITUTES  FOR  THE 
CHURCH 

MANY  of  our  ablest  clergymen  and 
theologians  have  written  upon  the 
subject  of  the  apparent  decline  of  the  church, 
and  have  attempted  to  contribute  prac- 
tical suggestions  with  the  aim  of  directing 
the  church  into  a  state  of  rejuvenation.  A 
notable  instance  of  this  which  serv-es  well 
our  purpose  for  illustrating  a  fundamental 
church  problem,  is  the  case  of  the  evan- 
gelist. Dr.  W.  J.  Dawson,  who,  in  his  vigor- 
ous and  highly  useful  novel,  "A  Prophet 
in  Babylon,"  has  outlined  "The  League 
for  Universal  Service"  as  a  possible  sub- 
stitute for  the  church. 

This  "League  for  Universal  Service"  is 
an  imagined  new  religious  movement,  at 
136 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

once  capable  of  federating  most  of  the 
churches  and  of  uniting  all  truly  religious 
men  and  women,  whether  inside  or  outside 
of  the  church,  for  altruistic  and  humani- 
tarian services.  This  new  movement  would 
attach  less  importance  than  the  church  has 
ever  attached  to  creeds  and  dogmas.  It 
would,  furthermore,  attach  slight  importance 
to  doctrines,  which  is  a  fatal  mistake.  It 
would  emphasize  more  than  the  church  has 
ever  done,  the  necessity  of  performing  good 
works.  In  underestimating  the  importance 
of  doctrine,  however,  which  is  nothing  but 
the  detailed  statement  of  knowledge,  it 
would  deprive  itself  of  the  chief  instru- 
mentality necessary  in  the  performance  of 
good  works.  As  a  movement,  however,  it 
would  claim  to  create  new  opportunities 
for  doing  good  by  organizing,  as  special 
branches  of  its  work,  certain  efforts  for 
helping  the  poor,  relieving  the  sick,  puri- 
137 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

fying  politics,  compelling  honesty  in  busi- 
ness. 

The  general  purposes  of  this  league  are 
wholesome  and  admirable  in  helping  to 
destroy  the  power  of  irrational  creeds  and 
dogmas.  The  league  would  serve  a  splendid 
purpose  in  giving  new  emphasis  to  the  ap- 
plication of  religion  to  life.  It  would  on  the 
whole  accomplish  a  great  mission.  In  or- 
ganizing the  tens  of  thousands  of  noble 
hearted  and  altruistic  men  and  women  who 
stand  ready  to  make  sacrifices  for  the  common 
good,  but  who  are  now  without  church  affili- 
ation, and  getting  them  to  co-operate  with 
church  people  in  fighting  various  kinds  of  evil, 
it  would  work  out  a  sublime  achievement. 

There  is  one  sufficient  reason,  however, 
why  this  league,  in  the  very  nature  of  things, 
could  not  become  the  substitute  for  and  the 
successor  of  the  Christian  church.  The 
reason  is,  that  it  would  be  itself  nothing  more 
138 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

significant  than  one  of  numerous  good  move- 
ments. The  real  church  is  not  a  "move- 
ment." A  movement  such  as  this  league 
would  represent  always  implies  that  the 
opportunities  for  the  practice  of  religion  are 
not  already  and  always  sufficient.  This  is  a 
most  fundamental  error.  The  opportunities 
for  the  practice  of  religion,  for  the  application 
of  theological  truths  to  secular  or  scientific 
affairs,  are  always  sufficient.  We  may  create 
conditions  by  which  our  good  work  can  be 
made  more  effective,  but  the  very  lack  of  fa- 
vorable conditions  for  the  most  effective  work 
is  itself  the  greatest  possible  opporttinity  for 
religious  work. 

A  movement  of  this  kind  furthermore 
implies  that  the  special  work  which  it  maps 
out  to  be  done  is  the  special  work  which 
counts  most  of  all,  and  thereby  infers  that 
the  ordinary  vocations  and  avocations,  which 
we  pursue  outside  of  the  movement,  are 
139 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

fields  wherein  the  appHcation  of  rehgion  is 
incidental,  if  indeed  not  unimportant.  It 
implies  that  all  who  would  get  aboard  of  this 
ship  would  be  led  to  the  performance  of 
religious  duties,  and  thus  be  saved,  but  that 
all  who  remain  on  the  shore  of  their  own 
independent  duties  and  occupations  as  mem- 
bers of  society,  would  be  led  astray  and  lost. 
It  would  have  a  tendency  to  lead  to  the 
Pharisaical  and  sectarian  implication  that 
anyone  who  joined  the  league  and  worked 
in  some  of  its  departments  would  thereby 
be  paying  for  the  privilege  of  going  about 
the  ordinary  business  and  social  affairs  of 
life  as  selfishly  as  might  be  desired. 

It  is  assumed  by  Dr.  Dawson  in  his  book 
that  enthusiasm  for  a  movement  such  as  the 
"  League  for  Universal  Service  "  would  repre- 
sent a  Christ-like  spirit.  Some  wonderfully 
descriptive  pages  are  devoted  to  the  red-hot 
enthusiasm  and  devotion  which  the  new 
140 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

movement  created.  The  fact  is,  however, 
which  cannot  be  emphasized  in  this  con- 
nection too  strongly,  that  enthusiasm  for 
movements  seldom,  if  ever,  springs  from  a 
Christ-like  spirit.  All  history  shows,  as  well 
as  experience,  that,  usually,  enthusiasm  for 
a  movement,  whether  it  be  a  religious  or 
secular  one,  is  the  enthusiasm  of  fanaticism. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  controlled  enthusiasm 
which  is  perfectly  legitimate  and  necessary. 
Mental  elation,  however,  when  it  goes  beyond 
reasonable  bounds,  is  a  grave  evil. 

Phariseeism  is  the  enthusiasm  of  fanati- 
cism for  a  movement,  with  the  church  as 
the  movement.  When  the  movement  it- 
self becomes  the  object  of  enthusiasm  and 
devotion,  even  though  the  church  be  that 
movement,  then  the  means  are  mistaken  for 
the  end.  Men  who  are  the  victims  of  an 
all-absorbing  enthusiasm  for  any  movement 
are  worshippers  of  idols, — the  movement 
141 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

itself  has  become  the  God  of  the  devotee. 
Enthusiasts  for  a  movement  usually  be- 
come one-sided  advocates,  who  misdirect 
their  own  reasoning  as  sophists  do,  and  al- 
ways fight  for  their  side,  right  or  wrong. 

Men  should  be  exceedingly  cautious  about 
lending  enthusiasm  to  any  movement,  even 
though  that  movement  should  be  called  a 
church.  They  should  think  of  a  movement 
as  they  would  think  of  machinery,  as  an 
instrument  for  some  achievement  other  than 
itself.  Any  movement  we  join,  whether  an 
anti-slavery  movement,  a  temperance  move- 
ment, an  anti-trust  and  reform  movement, 
a  league-for-universal-service  movement,  or 
a  church  movement,  should  be  recognized 
only  as  special  machinery  designed  for  ac- 
complishing limited  results.  Most  move- 
ments are  supposed,  by  their  fanatical 
followers,  to  be  designed  to  accomplish  un- 
limited results.    In  the  sense  that  certain 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

machinery  is  indispensable  to  some  definite 
limited  results,  so  certain  movements  may- 
be indispensable ;  but,  if  we  should  think  of 
a  man  becoming  so  infatuated  with  an  elec- 
tric motor,  for  example,  as  to  think  that  the 
electric  motor  was  the  only  machinery  needed 
in  the  world,  and  that  the  energies  of  the 
whole  human  race  should  be  devoted  to  the 
building  of  electric  motors,  he  would  be 
displaying  a  fanaticism  or  Phariseeism  no 
less  absurd  than  that  of  some  reformers 
and  churchmen  in  their  attitude  towards 
the  particular  movement  or  church  to  which 
they  devote  themselves.  The  church,  when 
it  is  well  started  in  the  work  of  filling  its 
real  function,  will  direct  men  in  making  ap- 
plication of  religion  to  life  by  means  of  all 
the  various  movements  with  which  they 
may  be  identified.  In  other  words,  all  of 
the  numerous  movements  with  which  any 
man  finds  himself  identified  will  be  utilized 
143 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

as  SO  many  pieces  of  machinery  for  helping 
the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
in  the  world.  It  should  be  understood  that 
man's  home  life  is  one  of  the  movements 
with  which  he  is  identified;  his  business  is 
another ;  his  politics  is  another ;  his  charities 
and  philanthropies  are  still  others;  his 
club  or  fraternal  order  is  one;  likewise  his 
private  studies  in  some  favorite  science  or 
special  theme  is  a  movement.  There  may 
be  a  hundred  other  movements  with  which 
one  man  may  be  identified.  These  are  to 
be  considered  as  nothing  more  than  so  many 
different  kinds  of  machinery,  with  which 
the  Christian  works  in  doing  the  will  of 
God  by  applying  his  religion  to  life.  The 
League  for  Universal  Ser\-ice  could  not  be 
considered  as  anything  more  than  one  of 
these  numerous  movements.  Nearly  all  of 
our  so-called  religious  movements,  includ- 
ing the  churches  themselves,  promote  the 
144 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

positive  evil  of  deceiving  men  about  the 
religious  obligations  they  owe  to  those  affairs 
and  problems  of  life  that  are  not  included 
in  their  particular  interests.  Sometimes  the 
church,  in  demanding  service  and  tithes 
from  its  members,  underestimates  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  the  interests  of  the  Lord 
that  abide  in  the  man's  home  and  business 
and  social  life.  God  is  not  only  in  the  church, 
but  He  is  in  organized  education,  statesman- 
ship, politics,  business,  industry,  commer- 
cialism and  in  all  other  secular  pursuits. 
In  all  of  these  different  places.  He  has  in- 
terests to  be  guarded  and  fostered.  The 
church  has  too  frequently  presumed  upon 
its  own  monopoly  of  the  interests  of  the 
infinite  Being  in  the  world,  and  been  totally 
blind  to  the  relative  importance  and  value 
of  these  different  organized  branches  of 
human  activity. 


lO 


145 


X 


PHARISEEISM 

THE  bacteria  of  phariseeism  has  been  the 
chief  of  the  infectious  and  mahgnant 
poisons  in  the  very  blood  of  the  church  since 
Christ's  time,  as  well  as  at  His  time,  in- 
validating much  of  the  church's  achieve- 
ments, causing  a  misinterpretation  of  the 
Scriptures,  a  per\-ersion  of  truth  and  a  cor- 
ruption of  life.  The  spirituality  of  Christen- 
dom, in  consequence,  has  been  in  a  state  of 
chronic  invalidism.  This  age  seems  to  be 
one  of  judgment  for  both  nations  and 
churches.  The  conversion  of  Christendom  to 
Christianity  will  undoubtedly  be  the  crown- 
ing achievement  of  this  new  century. 

When  Jesus  Christ  confronted  the  re- 
presentatives of  the  organized  church  of 
His  day.  He  uttered  the  most  cutting  and 
146 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

penetrating  and  damnatory  accusations 
against  it  to  be  found.  A  part  of  these 
accusations  are  recorded  in  the  twenty-third 
chapter  of  Matthew's  Gospel. 

The  same  pharisaical  spirit  that  caused  a 
total  perversion  of  religion  in  the  Jewish 
church  at  the  time  of  Christ,  and  led  the 
organized  church  to  represent,  not  so  much 
the  interests  of  heaven  as  those  of  hell,  is 
always  more  or  less  prevalent  in  the  hearts 
of  men  and  in  the  church.  Phariseeism  is 
inclusive  of  fanaticism,  sectarian  bigotry, 
intolerance,  literalism,  formalism,  know-it- 
all-ism,  hypocrisy.  When  men  speak  of 
the  ancient  power  and  prestige  of  the  church, 
they  speak,  for  the  most  part,  of  the  power 
and  prestige  of  organized  phariseeism.  The 
organized  church  has  never  yet  been  an  ideal 
institution.  In  looking  upon  the  church 
historically,  as  perhaps  the  greatest  and  most 
venerable  of  institutions  until  the  rise  of 
147 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

the  modem  university,  we  should  discrim- 
inate between  the  great  power  that  it  has 
exerted  and  the  good  that  it  has  done.  Its 
good  has  never  yet  been  equal  to  its  power. 
Much  of  the  power  of  the  church  has  like- 
wise been  exercised  for  evil  instead  of  good. 
This  is  particularly  true  of  the  church  of 
the  middle  or  dark  ages.  It  is  in  a  measure, 
and  only  too  largely,  true  of  the  church  of 
today.  The  escape  of  the  church  from  the 
dominance  of  the  pharisaical  spirit  will 
be  made  with  nothing  short  of  adequate 
theological  or  doctrinal  or  spiritual  knowl- 
edge. 

The  church  of  Christ's  time  had  its 
temples  of  worship,  its  priests,  its  mission- 
aries and  its  rituals.  It  had  also  the  Old 
Testament.  It  professed  belief  in  God  and 
in  the  sacredness  of  Scripture.  What  more 
could  be  expected  of  the  church?  Yet  to 
its  representatives  Christ  exclaimed,  "Ye 
148 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

serpents,  ye  generation  of  vipers,  how  can 
ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell!"  No 
greater  folly  is  ever  committed  than  by  the 
church,  when  it  assumes  that  Christ's  ac- 
cusations against  the  Pharisees  are  not 
directed  in  some  measure  against  it. 

The  Pharisees  of  the  established  church 
of  Christ's  time  worked  as  zealously  for  their 
church  institution  as  churchmen  of  any 
other  century,  including  our  own.  They 
would  walk  as  many  miles  to  attend  a  church 
service.  They  would  give  as  much  of  their 
time  to  the  church.  They  would  as  un- 
grudgingly give  money  for  sustaining  the 
church.  Their  missionaries  seemed  to  be 
so  unselfish  and  altruistic  as  even  to  traverse 
land  and  sea,  enduring  all  kinds  of  hard- 
ships and  privations.  The  Divine  Man, 
however,  who  stood  in  their  midst,  exclaimed, 
even  in  reference  to  this  supposedly  and 
seemingly  unselfish  missionary  work:  "Woe 
149 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

unto  you,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites! 
for  ye  compass  sea  and  land  to  make  one 
proselyte,  and  when  he  is  become  so,  ye 
make  him  two-fold  more  a  son  of  hell  than 
yourselves."  Where  can  more  expressive 
language  than  this  be  found? 

Does  not  the  history  of  the  church  suggest 
at  least  the  possibility  of  the  fact  that  many 
of  the  so-called  conversions  made  by  re- 
vivalists and  preachers  and  missionaries 
result  in  making  the  proselytes  more  the 
sons  of  hell  than  their  teachers?  Christ's 
words  certainly  give  us  sufficient  reason 
for  caution  and  investigation  in  this  matter. 
When  a  preacher  makes  a  convert,  he  makes 
a  convert  to  what?  Everything  depends 
upon  this  "what."  It  is  unquestionably 
true  that  sometimes  the  Christian  convert 
is  led  to  think  of  Christianity  as  something 
entirely  different  from  what  it  is.  To 
mistake  for  Christianity  something  that  is 
150 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

not  Christianity,  is  one  of  the  colossal  blunders 
that  the  church  and  ministers  and  mission- 
aries have  been  making  for  centuries. 

When  the  unconverted  are  appealed  to 
"to  come  to  Jesus"  and  "to  believe  in 
Christ,"  without  first  having  been  informed 
as  to  who  Christ  was  and  who  He  is,  and 
what  coming  to  Him  and  believing  in  Him 
mean,  in  terms  of  actual  life,  then  many 
times  the  converts  have  been  converts  to 
a  perversion  of  Christianity,  which  may 
be  all,  or  worse  than,  paganism. 

The  mob  that  crucified  Christ  believed  in 
Him  in  the  sense  that  many  professing 
Christians  now  believe.  They  had  no  doubt 
about  His  having  been  bom.  Some  of 
them  had  even  eaten  of  the  loaves  and  fishes 
which  He  had  miraculously  supplied.  When 
their  eyes  caught  the  flash  from  His  eyes, 
and  they  saw  the  very  flesh  and  figure  of 
the  incarnate  God,  certainly  they  had  a  more 
151 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

detailed  knowledge  of  Him  than  many 
modem  converts  have,  whose  knowledge 
consists  of  the  materialistic  and  realistic 
descriptions  given  by  the  clergy.  What 
vital  element  of  knowledge  was  lacking  in 
those  who,  in  spite  of  their  belief  in  Him 
and  knowledge  of  Him,  were  yet  crucifying 
Him?  They  had  no  knowledge  of  the  quality 
of  His  love.  They  had  no  understanding 
of  the  relation  between  His  love  and  their 
own  practical  problems  of  life.  There  are 
tens  of  thousands  of  professing  Christians 
today  who,  because  of  their  supposed  belief 
in  the  historical  Christ  and  in  what  is  to 
them  His  indefinable  divinity,  are  taking 
for  granted  that  they  have  been  "bom  again  " 
and  are  "saved,"  but  who,  in  very  fact,  are 
as  densely  ignorant  of  the  essential  charac- 
teristics of  Christ  as  was  the  mob  that 
cmcified  Him.  And  indeed  such  persons 
are  to-day  actually  cmcifying  Christ  over 
152 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

again  by  their  pharisaical  attitude  toward 
the  business  and  secular  affairs  of  their 
personal  lives.  All  professing  Christians  who 
fail  to  catch  true  glimpses  of  the  quality  of 
Christ's  love,  and  to  see  it  in  terms  of  the 
things  which  make  up  their  daily  conduct, 
are,  as  to  the  spiritual  quality  of  their  own 
lives,  and  in  spite  of  their  spiritual  conceit 
and  religious  professions,  the  same  as  those 
to  whom  the  Lord  addressed  the  follow- 
ing words:  "Woe  unto  you,  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  hypocrites!  because  ye  build  the 
tombs  of  the  prophets  and  garnish  the 
sepulchres  of  the  righteous,  and  say,  if  we 
had  been  in  the  days  of  our  fathers,  we 
would  not  have  been  partakers  with  them  in 
the  blood  of  the  prophets.  Wherefore  ye 
be  witnesses  unto  yourselves  that  ye  are  the 
children  of  them  which  killed  the  prophets." 
(Matt.  23  :  29-31.) 
Many  a  pharisaical  fanatic  has  gone  to 

153 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

some  far  comer  of  the  earth  as  a  represen- 
tative of  some  church  to  proclaim  damna- 
tion to  those  who  should  not  recognize  his 
authority  for  dogmatic  and  unreasonable 
statements,  with  the  idea  that  he  was  ful- 
filling Christ's  command:  "Go  ye  into  all 
the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  whole 
creation." 

The  interpretation  of  this  command  to 
go  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel 
to  the  whole  creation,  as  made  by  many 
preachers  and  missionaries,  affords  a  good 
illustration  of  the  literal  and  fanatical  per- 
version of  the  Gospel  that  is  made  by 
representatives  of  the  church  today.  This 
command  does  imply,  of  course,  the  general 
truth  that  those  who  represent  the  interests 
of  the  Gospel  should  extend  the  truths  of 
religion  as  widely  as  may  be  practicable, 
even  to  the  pagan  world.  But  he  who 
thinks  alone  of  geographical  boundaries 
154 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

when  extending  the  truths  of  rehgion  be- 
comes so  much  of  a  hterahst  as  to  be  a 
Pharisee,  and  to  misinterpret  the  Gospel. 
The  primary  and  most  manifest  meaning  of 
this  command  is  that  the  Gospel  must  be 
preached  by  every  Christian  in  every  realm 
and  plane  of  his  own  individual  life — in 
the  entire  world  of  his  own  mind.  It  means, 
first  of  all,  that  the  Christian  must  preach 
the  Gospel  to  himself,  in  respect  to  his  own 
lowest  and  least  and  most  sensuous  interests, 
and  then  to  all  the  secular  as  well  as  to  the 
sacred  interests  of  his  life.  Any  preacher 
or  missionary  who  is  so  spiritually  stupid 
that  he  cannot  see  that  this  command  refers 
primarily  to  the  application  of  the  Gospel 
to  the  affairs  of  one's  own  sensuous  and 
secular  life,  as  well  as  to  preaching  to  the 
heathen,  is  a  person  too  deficient  spiritually 
to  understand  the  Gospel,  and  who,  if  he 
goes  to  foreign  lands  as  a  missionary,  is  not 
155 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

likely  to  preach  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ, 
but,  instead,  some  misrepresentation  of  the 
Gospel  that  is  worse  than  the  paganism  of 
the  heathen  whom  he  tries  to  convert. 


156 


XI 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MISSIONARY  WORK 

HE  spirit  and  purpose  of  mission  work 


1  is  destined  to  undergo  marked  changes. 
Today  heathendom  is  thought  of  geograph- 
ically only,  and  is  synonymous  with  Asia 
and  Africa  and  the  different  parts  of  the 
world  outside  of  Christendom.  By  pagans 
is  generally  meant  the  Chinese,  the  Hindu, 
the  Arab  and  all  followers  of  religions  other 
than  the  Christian  religion.  These  dis- 
tinctions and  conceptions  are  for  the  most 
part  correct,  so  far  as  they  go.  Heathen- 
dom certainly  includes  these  various  coun- 
tries, and  the  worshippers  at  the  shrines  of 
false  religions  are  to  be  called  pagans. 
There  are,  however,  other  and  larger  worlds 
of  heathendom,  that  have  no  geographical 
boundary  lines,  but  which  are,  nevertheless, 


157 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

inhabited  by  their  respective  pagan  popula- 
tions. 

The  materialistic  schools,  colleges  and 
universities  within  the  borders  of  Christen- 
dom represent  the  largest  single  realm  of 
heathendom  in  the  world  to-day.  Partisan 
politics  is  a  heathendom  larger  than  China. 
Commercialism  is  one  requiring  vastly  more 
at  the  hands  of  the  church  than  all  of  India. 
The  church  has  been  sending  missionaries 
to  foreign  lands,  while  neglecting  to  send 
missionaries  into  these  vastly  more  important 
centers  of  heathendom,  and  by  so  doing  it 
has  in  this  respect  also  been  doing  practically 
what  the  Pharisees  did  when  Christ  said  to 
them:  "  Ye  pay  tithe  of  mint  and  anise  and 
cummin  and  have  omitted  the  weightier 
matters  of  the  law,  judgment,  mercy  and  faith : 
these  ought  ye  to  have  done,  and  not  to 
leave  the  other  undone.  Ye  blind  guides, 
which  strain  at  a  gnat  and  swallow  a  camel!" 
158 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

Just  in  the  sense  that  these  smaller  matters, 
the  mint  and  the  anise  and  the  cummin, 
were  not  to  be  neglected,  the  missionary- 
work  in  foreign  fields  is  not  to  be  neglected. 
But  in  laying  the  supreme  emphasis  upon 
these  lesser  matters,  and  neglecting  the 
weightier  matters,  the  church  is  continuing 
today  to  repeat  its  old  pharisaical  folly. 
The  methods  of  preaching  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ  within  the  scientific  areas  of 
our  colleges  and  universities,  and  within  the 
realm  of  commercialism,  and  within  that  of 
politics,  as  likewise  within  the  other  heathen- 
doms of  secular  life  in  Christendom,  must 
be,  as  is  quite  evident,  very  different  from 
the  ordinary  method  of  standing  up  with 
Bible  in  hand  proclaiming  creed  and  dogma. 

Every  member  of  the  church  in  the  future, 
with  no  exception,  if  he  be  not  a  Pharisee  or 
hypocrite,  is  to  be  also  a  missionary.    He  is  to 
be  a  missionary  in  the  heathendom  wherein 
159 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

he  follows  his  secular  vocation.  In  other 
words,  every  Christian  or  churchman  must 
necessarily  become  a  missionary  in  busi- 
ness— with  business  defined  broadly.  Pro- 
fessors and  instructors  in  our  colleges  and 
universities,  who  are  at  the  same  time 
Christians,  will  counteract  the  materialistic 
and  agnostic  currents  of  influence  which  are 
now  undermining  and  destroying  much  of 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  best  intelligence  of 
the  world.  In  speaking  of  the  modern 
universities  as  perhaps  the  chief  agency  in 
the  world  for  the  destruction  of  spirituality 
and  for  the  spread  of  materialism  and  agnos- 
ticism, acknowledgment  should  be  made  of 
the  signs  already  manifest  which  prophesy 
a  change  for  the  better  in  this  respect.  There 
have  been  in  recent  years  splendid  evidences 
which  show  that  missionaries  are  already  at 
work  in  this  field.  Henry  Drummond,  John 
Fiske,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  and  President  W. 
i6o 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

H.  P.  Faunce  are  examples  of  this  kind  of 
missionary. 

The  churchman  who  is  at  the  same  time 
either  a  repubHcan,  democrat,  socialist, 
prohibitionist  or  member  of  some  other 
party,  will  find  his  method  of  preaching 
Christ's  Gospel  within  the  heathendom  of 
party  organization,  by  doing  the  most  that 
is  within  his  power,  under  his  circum- 
stances, to  make  his  political  party  stand  for 
the  interests  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  the 
world.  The  missionary  in  the  business  arena 
will  work  for  dollars  only  incidentally  or 
as  an  instrumental  means  to  create  and 
establish  Christ-like  methods  and  condi- 
tions in  business  and  to  increase  his  own 
power  in  behalf  of  the  world's  spirituality. 
The  Christian  legislator  will  preach  the 
Gospel  by  endeavoring  to  make  laws  such 
as  he  thinks  Christ  Himself  would  advocate 
if  He  were  in  his  place. 
II  i6i 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

When  we  consider  the  materiahsm  and 
agnosticism  that  are  traceable  to  the  false 
implications  of  science  as  taught  in  our 
colleges  and  universities,  and  when  we  look 
upon  the  warfare  that  is  prevailing  in  com- 
mercialism, and  when  we  are  aware  of  the 
unscrupulous  methods  of  infernal  ambi- 
tion in  the  field  of  politics,  we  know  at  once 
that  Christ's  words  to  His  disciples  will 
be  applicable  to  the  missionaries  in  these 
fields,  when  he  said:  "Ye  are  as  lambs 
among  wolves."  Right  within  the  borders 
of  Christendom,  our  professing  Christians 
might  be  numbered  by  the  thousands  who, 
if  they  should  cease  to  be  Pharisees  and 
hypocrites,  and  begin  to  be  missionaries 
of  Christ's  Gospel  in  the  heathendom  of 
their  secular  lives,  would  find  that  their 
lot  had  suddenly  become  as  perilous  as  is 
that  of  missionaries  on  a  cannibal  island. 
But  in  spite  of  any  hazard  that  may  con- 
162 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

front  the  churchman,  the  true  theology  of 
the  church  is  to  demand  of  him  that  he  do 
nothing  short  of  preaching  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ  in  the  realms  of  both  his  vo- 
cation and  avocation. 

There  is  one  fact,  furthermore,  which  the 
missionaries  of  this  true  type  will  properly 
heed,  and  which  I  mention  here  as  a  kind 
of  repetition  of  what  has  been  repeated 
several  times  before,  because  of  its  indis- 
pensable importance,  and  because  of  the 
present  almost  universal  lack  of  apprecia- 
tion of  it.  It  is  that  no  man  can  be  a  use- 
ful missionary  of  this  true  type  without  an 
adequate  equipment  of  theological  knowledge. 
Just  as  it  is  with  many  self-styled  reformers 
who  because  of  ignorance  destroy  the  cause 
for  which  they  pretend  to  work,  so  it  is 
with  many  religious  pretenders  who  pervert 
the  Gospel,  misrepresent  religion  and  injure 
the  church  because  of  ignorance  in  theology. 
163 


XII 


THE    FUNCTION    AND    THE    FUTURE    OF  THE 


HEN  the  church  once  possesses  it- 


V  V  self  of  an  adequate  theology,  such  as 
the  one  the  potential  existence  of  which 
this  book  is  endeavoring  to  point  out  in 
dim  outline,  then  its  function  will  be  very 
different  from  that  of  the  church  at  the 
present  time.  If,  as  stated  in  Chapter  VII, 
living  religiously  or  irreligiously  is  involved 
in  every  secular  activity  of  man's  life  with- 
out exception,  and  if  it  is  in  the  very  nature 
of  things  that  every  man  either  applies 
or  misapplies  some  theological  truth  with 
weighty  consequences  whenever  he  makes 
the  effort  to  apply  any  scientific  knowledge, 
then  the  church,  which  stands  for  theology, 
must  inevitably  become  as  intimately  and 


CHURCH 


164 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

vitally  identified  with  the  secular  vocations 
and  avocations  of  men  as  are  the  schools 
and  colleges. 

In  this  connection  we  may  again  make 
use  of  analogy  to  keep  us  in  the  way  of  truth, 
and  to  enable  us  to  be  clear  in  our  concep- 
tions of  a  far-reaching  and  most  important 
matter  for  consideration.  If  theological 
knowledge  is,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  analo- 
gous to  and  co-extensive  with  scientific 
knowledge,  then  it  logically  follows  that 
the  church  must  become  the  counterpart  of  all 
scientific  institutions  of  learning  collectively, 
and,  in  the  sense  that  the  function  of  the  one 
is  analogous  to  the  function  of  the  other, 
the  church  is  certainly  destined  to  rise 
into  the  importance  of  what  this  analogy 
implies. 

Every  large  interest  among  men  must  be 
represented  by  and,  as  it  were,  be  incar- 
nated in  some  human  organization.  Science 
165 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

itself  would  be  like  a  soul  without  a  body  if 
it  were  not  for  so-called  organized  educa- 
tion. The  church  is  the  organization  which 
stands  related  to  theology  as  the  schools 
and  colleges  or  organized  education  stand 
related  to  science.  (It  is  not  to  be  over- 
looked, of  course,  that,  in  so  far  as  true  the- 
ology abides  in  the  understanding  and  life 
of  any  man,  it  is  incarnated  there,  and  the 
man,  as  an  individual,  is  himself  a  church 
in  least  form.) 

Organized  education  is  related  to  busi- 
ness, to  statesmanship,  to  scientific  ad- 
vancement and  to  material  progress  more 
vitally  than  most  persons  have  ever  taken 
pains  to  make  note  of.  In  our  complex 
civilization  there  is  scarcely  anything  of 
value  which  could  be  accomplished  if  it 
were  not  for  the  mental  preparation  which 
organized  education  facilitates.  No  great 
buildings  could  be  constructed,  no  good 
i66 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

laws  framed,  no  commerce  extended,  no 
machinery  built,  if  it  were  not  for  what 
organized  education  contributes  to  these 
fields  of  human  endeavor.  Without  or- 
ganized education  of  some  kind  the  race 
itself  could  scarcely  survive,  and  if  it  did  at 
all,  it  would  be  in  a  state  of  low  barbarism. 
The  more  highly  organized  and  the  more 
efficient  our  educational  systems  become, 
the  greater  becomes  the  general  progress 
of  material  civilization.  It  is  evident  that, 
given  the  natural  resources  of  the  earth, 
material  achievements  are  primarily  de- 
pendent upon  mental  preparation  or  knowl- 
edge. This  does  not  mean  that  knowledge 
is  the  only  thing  upon  which  they  are  de- 
pendent. There  are  many  men  who  know 
how  to  do  things,  who  do  nothing.  There 
must  also  be  will,  determination,  aspiration, 
legitimate  enthusiasm,  in  addition  to  knowl- 
edge, or  else  there  would  be  no  worthy 
167 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

achievements.  But,  no  matter  how  much 
zeal  there  should  be,  without  knowledge  as 
its  directing  instrumentality,  useful  achieve- 
ments could  never  occur. 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  already 
alluded  to  and  described  certain  definite  and 
concrete  spiritual  achievements.  It  is  just  as 
foolish  to  suppose  that  spiritual  achievements 
can  be  consummated  without  adequate 
knowledge  as  that  material  achievements  can 
be  consummated  without  adequate  knowl- 
edge. It  has  been  indicated  that  there  is  as 
much  room  for  spiritual  achievement  for 
every  individual  and  for  the  race  as  for  mate- 
rial achievement.  The  spiritual  accomplish- 
ments of  the  church  at  the  present  time  are 
comparatively  small.  And  the  prominence  of 
the  church  at  the  present  time  is  due  more 
largely  to  its  material  achievements  than 
to  its  spiritual  ones.  Being  largely  without 
spiritual  knowledge,  without  a  rational  the- 
i68 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ology,  it  has  trespassed  upon  illegitimate 
fields  by  endeavoring  to  do  the  work  which 
belongs  to  the  secular  or  scientific  institu- 
tions or  organizations.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  that  for  which  I  am  contending,  the 
present  tendency  within  the  church  to  con- 
vert itself  into  a  social  reform  organization, 
for  instance,  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
spectacles  in  human  history.  And  this  I 
say,  as  a  self-styled  veteran  in  the  ranks  of 
those  who  have  made  and  are  making  sacri- 
fices for  fundamental  social  reform.  So- 
ciology or  political  economy  is  a  natural 
science  just  as  psychology  is.  Owing  to  its 
nature  it  falls  within  the  realm  of  organized 
education.  The  church  is  related  to  it 
very  much  in  the  same  way  that  it  is  related 
to  chemistry  or  mathematics  or  psychology. 
It  should  be  understood,  however,  that  the 
church's  relation  to  chemistry  and  to  mathe- 
matics is  a  most  vital  one,  so  vital  indeed 
169 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

that,  whenever  a  Christian  is  called  upon, 
by  circumstances,  to  apply  himself  either 
to  chemistry  or  to  mathematics,  he  is  obliged 
to  do  so  with  an  ultimate  spiritual  end  in 
mind.  The  church  does  not  hold  itself 
aloof  from  mathematics  or  chemistry,  and 
hence  neither  does  it  hold  itself  aloof  from 
social  reform.  Inasmuch  as  the  very  cir- 
cumstances of  life  oblige  every  man  to  take 
an  active  part  in  sociological  matters, 
whereas  only  a  few  men  comparatively  are 
required  to  be  chemists,  astronomers  or 
psychologists,  therefore  the  church  must 
require  of  every  one  of  its  members  that  he 
be  a  social  reformer.  This,  however,  is  a 
decidedly  different  thing  from  the  church's 
attempting  to  teach  the  science  of  economics. 
The  church  will  affect  vitally  the  activities 
of  its  members  in  every  workshop,  business 
establishment  and  legislative  hall,  by  teach- 
ing them  how  best  to  serve  the  universal 
170 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

good  in  such  places.  But  the  church  it- 
self is  not  a  social  reform  organization  or  a 
hospital  or  an  institution  for  the  advance- 
ment of  science. 

The  essential  difference  between  theology 
and  science,  between  the  church  and  scien- 
tific institutions  of  learning,  is  that  one 
stands  for  spiritual  achievement,  whereas 
the  other  stands  for  material  achievement. 
What  spiritual  achievements  are,  was  out- 
lined in  Chapter  VII  as  well  as  in  some 
other  chapters,  particularly  Chapter  IV. 
Economics  as  a  science,  for  instance,  recog- 
nizes social  improvement  as  an  end  in  itself. 
In  so  doing  science  acts  legitimately,  for  such 
is  the  scientific  end.  Theology,  on  the  other 
hand,  recognizes  every  social  improvement, 
not  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  as  an  instrumen- 
tality to  spiritual  achievements  as  the  ulti- 
mate end.  Inasmuch  as  spiritual  achieve- 
ments, however,  always  lead  on  to  still 
171 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

other  higher  ones,  it  is  seen  that  there  is  no 
spiritual  achievement  to  be  found  which 
is  an  end  in  itself  in  the  sense  of  its  ever 
marking  the  end  of  progress. 

The  fact  should  never  be  lost  sight  of  that 
there  is  no  secular  or  scientific  achievement, 
howsoever  small  or  great,  wJiich  cannot,  by 
the  aid  of  theology,  be  made  instrumental 
to  a  spiritual  achievement.  When  the  church 
shall  come  to  represent  theology  approxi- 
mately as  well  as  the  schools  and  colleges 
now  represent  science,  then  the  world's 
progress  in  spirituality  will  keep  pace  with 
its  material  progress. 

When  the  college  graduate  enters  upon 
some  pursuit  immediately  following  the 
preparation  which  his  college  course  has 
given  him,  his  object  is  to  accomplish  some 
worthy  task.  In  accomplishing  this  task  he 
utilizes  the  knowledge  acquired  at  college. 
Each  achievement,  however,  should  be  the 
172 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

stepping-stone  to  another.  These  new 
achievements,  which  keep  looming  up  upon 
his  horizon  at  occasional  intervals  as  he  pro- 
ceeds in  life,  require  the  application  of  what 
he  already  knows,  plus  additional  knowledge 
that  he  must  yet  acquire.  Hence  it  is  that 
men  who  continue  to  grow  mentally  and 
thereby  keep  from  becoming  human  auto- 
matons, continue  also  to  be  students.  Thus 
only  may  they  become  more  efficient  every 
year  of  their  lives. 

This  mental  progress  of  men  who  grow  in 
worldly  efficiency  is  analogous  to  the  spir- 
itual progress  of  men  who  grow  in  spiritual 
or  unselfish  efficiency.  To  believe  that  the 
acceptance  of  a  few  religious  formulas  is 
sufficient  for  salvation  is  as  absurd  as  to 
believe  that  the  instruction  received  at  the 
primary  school  is  sufficient  for  directing  men 
in  all  their  greatest  possible  achievements. 
Men  will  declare  frequently  that  they  need 

173 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

no  other  spiritual  enlightenment  than  what 
they  find  in  the  one  precept:  "Do  unto 
others  as  you  would  that  they  should  do 
unto  you."  If  a  sufficient  light  radiates 
from  this  one  precept  to  direct  one  aright 
through  all  the  complicated  and  tangled 
paths  of  one's  spiritual  journey,  why  did 
Christ  have  anything  more  to  say,  and  why 
does  the  Bible  contain  so  many  other  things 
besides?  Think  how  this  precept  would 
be  carried  out  by  persons  in  different  walks 
of  life  and  with  different  ideals.  How  would 
it  be  carried  out,  for  instance,  by  the  man 
whose  ideal  state  of  happiness  is  the  mood 
of  partial  intoxication?  He  would  obey  it 
by  inviting  his  friends  to  share  with  him 
the  cordial  jollities  of  the  hospitable  saloon. 
And  thus,  ridiculous  as  it  may  seem  at  first 
thought,  he  would  actually  be  taking  a  step 
in  the  direction  of  a  religious  life.  But  if 
he  should  never  go  further  than  this  step, 
174 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

what  would  be  his  final  destination?  Men 
who  take  religion  seriously,  who  look  at 
their  immortal  interests  calmly,  and  with 
normal  judgment,  become  as  eager  or  as 
zealous  to  increase  their  spiritual  learning 
as  our  so-called  level-headed  men  of  affairs 
become  set  upon  gaining  the  information 
upon  which  alone  their  increasing  success 
depends. 

All  of  us  have  seen  preachers,  lawyers, 
doctors,  scientists,  business  men,  and  work- 
ing men,  with  shriveled  up  mentalities,  whose 
opinions  on  general  subjects  of  importance 
were  worthless  and  childish,  simply  because 
they  had  long  since  settled  down  into  a 
machine -like  routine  of  existence,  neglecting 
to  take  the  initiative  in  learning  new  things. 
This  degeneration  was  the  penalty  which  they 
paid  for  ceasing  to  be  students.  It  was  not 
necessarily  the  evidence  of  any  lack  of  ability. 
Such  sights  are  always  pathetic,  but  pathetic 
175 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

as  these  are,  they  are  not  nearly  so  distress- 
ing as  the  spectacle  of  those,  thinking  them- 
selves Christians,  who  have  long  since  left 
off  making  any  new  study  of  spiritual  things. 
To  be  sure,  love  is  the  primal  reality  in  a 
religious  life,  and,  indeed,  the  acquiring  of 
improved  qualities  of  love  is  the  essential 
achievement  of  a  religious  life ;  but  spiritual 
information,  learning  and  knowledge  are 
absolutely  indispensable  to  these  achieve- 
ments. 

The  analogy  which  we  have  frequently 
referred  to  between  the  objects  of  Nature 
and  those  of  Human-nature  is  due  to  a 
vital  relationship  between  spirit  and  matter. 
Owing  to  this  organic  relationship  science 
is  as  much  a  basis  for  theology  as  a  man's 
body  is  a  basis  for  his  soul.  Hence  it  is 
that  any  large  growth  in  spirituality  is 
dependent  upon  an  ample  basis  of  scientific 
or  worldly  knowledge.  This  statement,  how- 
176 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

ever,  should  not  be  misjudged  in  a  manner 
to  discredit  the  spiritual  development  of 
persons  of  little  learning.  The  very  necessi- 
ties of  life  cause  even  those  whom  we  call 
ignorant  to  make  multitudinous  and  wonder- 
ful observations  of  scientific  facts.  All  sense 
impressions  from  earliest  childhood  are  sci- 
entific facts  or  appearances  of  fact.  Hence, 
all  observing  persons  today  are  educated 
as  compared  with  men  of  previous  centuries. 
Any  man,  by  the  proper  use  of  the  scientific 
knowledge  which  it  is  his  privilege  to  know, 
provided  he  keeps  himself  in  an  inquiring 
or  studious  attitude,  will  be  led  by  Providence 
to  a  wonderful  spiritual  fruition.  The  chief 
thing  to  be  known  in  this  connection  is  that 
theology  is  qualified  to  enable  a  man  to  make 
use  of  his  scientific  learning  for  the  perfection 
of  his  character.  Observe  that  theology 
does  not  draw  any  man  away  from  scientific 
pursuits,  but  on  the  contrary,  urges  him 
12  177 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

into  scientific  pursuits,  and  then  enables  him 
to  use  his  scientific  experiences  as  a  means 
of  bringing  to  fruition  the  best  capacities 
and  powers  that  are  in  him  potentially.  It 
will  therefore  be  the  function  of  the  church 
to  direct  the  world,  by  theological  enlighten- 
ment, to  the  proper  use  to  be  made  of  all 
scientific  or  secular  activities  and  achieve- 
ments. 

When  we  look  upon  our  scientific  institu- 
tions of  learning,  as  they  are  being  conducted 
at  the  present  time  and  as  at  present  organized, 
their  function  is  not  strictly  or  accurately 
analogous  to  the  function  of  the  ideal  church. 
The  present  time  is  a  transitional  period  in 
business,  education  and  religion.  The  pur- 
poses of  the  schools  and  colleges  and  the 
methods  of  education  are  changing.  If  I 
may  be  pardoned  for  anticipating  some  de- 
velopments in  the  educational  world,  I  will 
be  able  to  make  much  clearer  the  real 
178 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

function  of  the  church.  The  fact  that 
knowledge  is  indispensable  to  useful  achieve- 
ment has  already  been  alluded  to.  Knowl- 
edge, however,  is  strictly  instrumental  in 
its  nature  or  character.  At  the  present 
time  the  commonly  accepted  purpose  of 
organized  education  is  to  advance  the  cause 
of  learning  as  though  learning  were  the  end 
in  itself.  Gradually  but  ever  more  swiftly, 
however,  it  is  coming  to  be  recognized  that 
the  chief  object  or  purpose  of  organized 
education  should  be  to  advance  civilization 
— itself  to  produce  the  best  possible  achieve- 
ments. Teaching,  then,  is  to  be  primarily 
for  the  sake  of  useful  achievement.  Knowl- 
edge gained  for  any  other  purpose  than  for 
application  in  useful  work  is  apt  to  be  an 
utter  waste.  Where  there  is  no  goal  the 
instrumentality  has  little  opportunity  to 
be  used  effectively. 

Economic  science  is  leading  on  to  almost 
179 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

revolutionary  changes  in  our  social  order. 
I  can  conceive  of  economic  changes,  ac- 
companied by  improvements  in  educational 
methods,  which  would  make  it  the  logical 
outcome  for  the  universities  to  become 
owners  or  proprietors  of  the  world's  greatest 
business  enterprises.  Before  the  federated 
universities  could  make  practical  business 
their  chief  object,  however,  and  cause  in- 
struction to  become  secondary  and  instru- 
mental to  the  business  in  hand,  some  form 
of  industrial  co-operation  or  pure  business 
democracy  would  need  to  prevail.  It  seems 
altogether  possible,  however,  that  under 
favorable  economic  conditions,  a  federation 
of  colleges  and  universities  might  act  as  the 
right  arm  of  governments  in  conducting 
most  of  the  leading  business  enterprises  of 
the  world.  Under  such  conditions  all  co- 
workers would  be  students,  and  students 
would  be  co-workers,  and  all  would  be  both 
i8o 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

doers  and  students  for  life.  The  chief  object 
of  business  then  would  be  to  lead  on  to  the 
best  possible  progress  of  civilization,  with 
organized  education  to  direct  it  toward 
this  goal.  Real  success  for  a  worker  then 
would  mean  his  ever  increasing  efficiency 
as  a  worker  for  the  common  good.  This 
would  require  study,  and  study  requires 
instruction.  Work,  study  and  instruction 
should  accompany  each  other,  not  only 
during  a  four  years'  term  at  college,  but 
through  one's  threescore  years  and  ten  of 
earthly  life. 

Many  steps  have  already  been  taken  in 
the  direction  of  establishing  this  relation 
between  organized  education  and  business, 
and  of  changing  the  methods  of  education 
so  as  to  make  this  object  its  goal.  Of  the 
numerous  steps  being  taken  in  this  direction, 
mention  may  be  made,  for  illustration,  of 
the  work  of  the  University  of  Cincinnati, 
i8i 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

many  of  whose  students  are  employed  in 
the  great  manufacturing  estabHshments  in 
the  vicinity  of  Cincinnati  and  study  at  the 
University  with  the  aim  of  becoming  more 
efficient  in  the  work  of  their  employment. 
The  whole  trend  of  the  educational  work  at 
the  University  of  Wisconsin  also  is  in  this 
general  direction.  It  has  rendered  this 
kind  of  assistance  particularly  to  the  workers 
of  the  agricultural  class  throughout  the 
entire  state.  Thousands  of  farmers  are  re- 
ceiving direct  educational  benefit  from  this 
institution  by  which  they  are  becoming 
both  better  farmers  and  better  citizens. 
And  the  increased  annual  output  of  the 
farms,  owing  to  this  educational  aid  rendered 
by  the  University,  runs  into  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars.  The  national  govern- 
ment itself  is  taking  many  steps  in  aug- 
menting this  swiftly  swelling  stream  of  ten- 
dency, as  instanced  by  what  it  is  doing  in 
182 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

forestry,  in  irrigation,  in  agriculture,  in 
sanitation  and  in  many  more  enterprises 
which  combine  education  with  work-in- 
hand.  These  various  government  under- 
takings, by  means  of  the  knowledge  they 
disseminate,  add  many  millions  to  the  na- 
tional wealth  annually. 

If  we  can  conceive  of  such  co-operation 
between  the  universities  and  the  industrial 
order  as  to  bring  most  of  the  world's  busi- 
ness under  the  control  and  direction  of  the 
scientific  institutions  of  learning,  to  the  end 
that  the  progress  of  civilization  might  be 
increased  to  its  maximum,  and  under  which 
regime  students  would  study  for  life,  be- 
cause they  would  work  all  of  life,  and  aim  to 
grow  more  efficient  throughout  life,  then 
we  have,  in  general  outline,  the  conception  of 
an  organization  of  the  world's  scientific 
institutions  of  learning,  whose  manifest 
function  would  be  almost  perfectly  analogous 
183 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

to  the  real  function  of  the  ideal  church  which 
is  yet  to  be  established  in  the  world. 
Organized  education  would  then  promote 
material  civilization  as  its  acknowledged 
chief  purpose,  and  employ  not  only  the 
class-room  and  the  laboratory,  but  also  the 
business  houses,  the  manufacturing  plants 
and  the  industrial  enterprises  of  the  world 
as  instrumentalities  to  this  end.  In  a  man- 
ner analogous  to  this  the  church  will  pro- 
mote as  its  primal  purpose  man's  "chief 
interest,"'^  which  is  shown  by  "the  standard 
of  all  values"  to  be  "the  spiritual  regenera- 
tion of  the  soul"  (as  pointed  out  in  pre- 
ceding chapters).  It  will  employ  not  only 
the  pulpit  and  the  printing  press,  but,  also, 
the  federation  of  colleges  and  universities, 
and  all  of  the  industrial  enterprises  con- 
ducted by  it,  and  all  other  secular  ac- 
tivities of  men,  as  instrumentalities  to  this 
*See  Chapter  IIL 
184 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

end.  This  is  the  function  of  the  church 
for  the  reason  that  theology  represents  that 
particular  kind  of  enlightenment  which  re- 
veals the  relations  between  man's  chief 
interest  and  all  scientific  or  worldly  or 
sensuous  interests,  and  thus  shows  how 
these  latter  must  be  dealt  with  in  daily 
conduct  to  promote  the  spiritual  end  in 
view. 

From  the  foregoing  it  would  seem  likely 
that  the  power  of  the  church  is  yet  to  be  multi- 
plied many  times,  for,  according  to  the  logic  of 
things,  its  power  must  necessarily  be  equal  to 
the  willingness  of  men  to  regard  their  ''chief 
interest''  as  having  first  claim  upon  them. 
At  the  same  time,  it  becomes  manifest  that 
all  the  superimposed  and  arbitrary  authority 
exercised  by  the  church,  such  as  it  has  al- 
ways tried  to  wield,  of  the  nature  of  a  king's 
authority  over  his  subjects,  or  of  a  parent's 
authority  over  his  children,  or  of  a  shepherd's 
i8s 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

authority  over  his  flock,  must  certainly  and 
inevitably  come  to  an  end. 

There  is  a  certain  kind  of  authority  which 
inheres  in  any  kind  of  an  organization  by 
which  law  and  order  are  established  and 
maintained.  The  church,  being  an  eccle- 
siastical organization,  must  have  its  own 
government  as  regards  the  working  of  its 
ecclesiastical  machinery.  This  will  be  the 
same  kind  of  authority,  however,  as  prevails 
in  the  purest  democracy.  Spiritual  freedom 
is  a  personal  matter,  and  is  of  such  a  profound 
character  that  no  man  can  possibly  be  forced 
against  his  will,  not  even  by  God  Almighty 
Himself,  to  choose  right  instead  of  \\Tong. 
And  it  is  also  in  the  nature  of  things  that  a 
man  cannot  be  forced  to  believe  what  does 
not  appear  to  him  as  believable.  Unless 
the  truth  is  first  seen  by  a  man  to  be  true, 
he  cannot  by  any  arbitrary  act  of  his  will 
compel  himself  to  believe  it.  Hence,  the 
i86 


RELIGION  RATIONALIZED 

church  will  cease  from  all  of  its  hitherto 
misdirected  efforts  in  the  direction  of  com- 
pelling men  by  external  authority  either  to 
choose  right  or  to  believe  its  dogmas. 
By  organized  effort,  as  an  organization,  the 
church  will  simply  put  forth  its  rays  of  il- 
lumination by  legitimate  and  orderly  methods 
and  in  such  a  way  that  saving  aspects  of 
spiritual  truth  will  be  as  a  light  surrounding 
every  man  in  the  world,  whether  he  is 
willing  to  open  his  eyes  to  it  or  not.  As 
for  those  who,  on  account  of  evil  lives,  are  un- 
willing to  do  right  and  to  see  the  truth  (the 
true  relationship  of  things  toward  the  universal 
good),  the  church  will  have  nothing  more  to  do 
with  them  than  to  make  a  ceaseless  and  affec- 
tionate appeal  and  to  cause  certain  indirect  in- 
fluences to  act  upon  their  lives.  But  as  to  the 
commonly  understood  meaning  of  the  term 
authority  in  religion  or  in  the  church,  the  days 
of  such  authority  are  swiftly  coming  to  an  end. 
187 


Announcement 

Those  upon  whom  the  foregoing  pages 
have  made  any  impression,  and  to  whom 
they  have  revealed  new  possibihties  of 
investigation  and  exploration  in  the  realm 
of  spiritual  realities,  will  be  interested  in 
knowing  that  the  author  has  nearly  com- 
pleted the  writing  of  a  second  volume 
which  is  to  be  a  logical  continuation  of  the 
contents  of  this  book.  The  second  vol- 
ume is  expected  to  be  published  by  about 
January,  191 1,  or  possibly  a  little  earlier. 
It  will  go  more  deeply  than  this  book 
has  done  into  the  important  matter  of 
determining  the  mental  processes  by 
which  man  may  come  into  the  definite 
and  positive  knowledge  of  fundamental 
spiritual  verities.  It  will  attempt  to 
treat  in  a  rational  and  logical  manner  the 
general  question  of  a  divine  revelation, 
and  thereby  show  the  places  to  be  occu- 
pied in  the  world's  new  and  advancing 
theology  by  the  Bible  and  by  Jesus  Christ. 


Date  Due 

J  * 


